


the art of slaying giants

by PenzyRome



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Humor, F/F, Family Secrets, Found Family, M/M, Magic, Quests, Rescue Missions, and civilization has rebuilt itself????, as usual jojo buttons raf joey hildy etc. all girls. my city now, fantasy road trip sorta thing, hmmm how to tag this, idk but its on earth but Future, ill add more tags as i go ig, ill just. add characters as we go theres a lot of these assholes, monarchy sucks!!!!, or is it a post-apocalyptic universe????, there is a post for this fic on tumblr PLEASE rb it if u like this fic, uncovering plots, where current species have mutated and magic has been discovered???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2019-10-04 07:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17300711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: "You are..." Katherine paused, and David tilted his head so he could see her as she stared up at the roof of their tent. "You are like the man the Ancients talked about. David? He battled a giant, Goliath."David hummed, and Katherine sighed. "His giant was smaller, though, but he was on his own."She looked over at him, and she smiled, but her face still hinted at the bitter sadness beneath it. "But at least he had a choice."





	1. every little penny in the wishing well

**Author's Note:**

> so uh. have fun with this. this is definitely going to be my darkest fic, i think????? i mean the bars on the fucking ground but y'know. i'm going to be tw-ing every chapter if there's anything serious in it, but this chapter doesn't have a lot of that besides like. creepy magic (lowkey i reread the spiderwick chronicles before writing this so that's something.) uhhhh yeah. have fun. also all the titles are going to be hadestown lyrics. i do what i want.

No one in Marlin’s End cared enough to be somewhere at the same time as anyone else. A tiny little ocean town, tired but not sleepy, quiet but not quaint. Filled to the brim with crackling energy and hostility.

The first time the town gathered together was when they sent one of their own to die.

The man tapped his pencil against his jawline.

The older one was powerful, she would survive. But the younger… a crease already forming between his eyebrows, hunched shoulders, prominent bones from years of hunger. Not a drop of magic. Not an ounce of anything special.

He let the corner of his mouth tip up as he scrawled a name onto the ballot.

_ David Jacobs. _

And across the crowd, in the entire town, out of one thousand, three hundred, and seventy-eight, one thousand, three hundred, and seventy-three did the same.

 

It wasn’t like the news came as a surprise. 

Since the moment the mayor had made the announcement, David had felt himself being wrapped up and sent with a ribbon bow off to the slaughter. Still, when the words were spoken, false niceties were made, the mayor’s foul, thin face twisted up into a tight little grin, he couldn’t help but wish that somehow he’d had the guts to run.

He’d seen the look on his mother’s face. She had paled, clutching his hand tightly, her face set. Only when they reached their home had she let out a small, choking sob, clutching Sarah’s shoulders while Les shook with angry tears.

David hadn’t cried. You don’t cry when nothing feels real. Jack had came through the back door of their home just a few minutes later, and David had buried his face into the soft fabric of Jack’s vest.

They stood like that for what seemed like hours when Sarah finally spoke. “I hate them,” she spat, like there was rage coiled in her throat.

Under any other circumstances, David knew Esther would have reprimanded her, saying in her soft voice that hate was a useless emotion. But she didn’t seem like she could spare the words, and so they grieved.

“I wonder if you’ll meet the king,” Jack said, his arms still wrapped around David’s waist.

“I’d kill him,” Les said, too much fury packed inside a thirteen year old for anyone’s comfort. “I’d kill him where he stood.”

All across the kingdom, people were sending their stronger and bravest to fight the most fearsome monster they’d ever heard of. They were sending heroes that they were sure would make it back and live in eternal stories.

David Jacobs was not a hero, and he knew in that moment that he would never make it back.

 

Dinner was silent, just the scrape of forks against plates and sometimes an occasional mutter for the pepper.

Jack held David’s hand tightly underneath the table, just barely an inch away from a raggedy patch on the wooden bench, a land mine of splinters.

Nearly everything in their house was ragtag, put together by Sarah’s magic six years ago. It was all they had, just a bedroom they all slept in and a second room that acted as a kitchen, living room, dining room, and everything else they truly needed.

The Jacobs family had near nothing but each other, and for the second time in too short a period, one of them was being taken away.

They were the town curse, everyone said. The reason there hadn't been a bountiful harvest or a rainy winter in six years.

No one would sell them anything, so they made everything themselves. Their house was built into the rockiest edge of the beach, a sad excuse for a garden growing on the closest soil. Most days, they didn’t go anywhere else, bar Jack’s home if they were careful to not be seen.

The town only saw the family when one of them would journey closer to the heart of the village to the nearest well, bringing water back each day.

That was, as a matter of fact, how David had become acquainted with one Jack Kelly.

They cleared the plates, no leftovers to make into compost, and placed the few dishes into the washing pot before Jack stood.

“Do you mind if David stays with me for the night, Esther? He’ll be back in the morning, do not worry. It’d just be a shame for him to spend his last night here having to share a bed.”

Esther smiled sadly, patting Jack’s cheek. “Of course. Be careful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Of course, Mama.” 

Esther kissed David on the cheek before she walked a few steps to where Sarah was already brushing her teeth with Les, preparing to sleep. Jack squeezed David’s hand gently, and they set off.

They didn’t speak until the made their way through the back door of Jack’s house. 

“Are you alright?”

David pursed his lips. “Would you be?”

Jack shook his head, his eyes drifting the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“Please do not apologize for things you can not change.”

Jack sat down next to David at the foot of his bed. “We could run.”

“They would just send Sarah.” David hated how his voice sounded empty, and he tried to make it just a little more powerful, in any way he could. “Mama and Les could not survive without her.”

Jack sighed, leaning into David’s shoulder and pressing a kiss to his collarbone.

“It isn’t right.”

David ran his fingers through Jack’s hair. “That does not mean it is not happening.”

“I’ll go,” Jack said quietly against David’s shirt. David closed his eyes, shaking his head, not sure if Jack even noticed him doing it. He turned to face Jack and cupped his face with both of his hands, blinking away tears. Jack placed his hand over David’s and leaned in to kiss him softly.

“Love,” David said softly, and Jack kissed him again, trying to wish away his determination to do what he had to. “Love,” David repeated, stronger that time, and Jack paused for a moment. “You know it would kill me if you died.”

Jack tilted his head, an  _ and you think it won’t kill me if you do?  _ spelled out clearly in his eyes.

For the first time in his life, David thought it might be selfish to be the sacrifice.

“Hey,” Jack said, using the pad of his thumb to wipe away tears that David didn’t even know had been there. “You’ll be okay. You’ll be accompanied by the kingdom’s bravest warriors, remember?”

David laughed, but it sounded hollow. “The kingdom’s bravest warriors and me.”

Jack leaned forward and kissed him. “Davey, you are not a warrior, but you’ve never not been brave.”

David didn’t really think there was anything to do after that other than try to kiss away their fears.

 

They were laying there together, and David could feel Jack’s eyelashes fluttering against his skin as he spoke. “Darling?” he asked into the darkness, and David hummed, his heart skipping the same way at twenty that it had at sixteen.

“I need you to know…” There was a beat of silence as Jack moved up slightly so his face could be right across from David’s. “If there was anything I could say, anything in the world, that would make you run, far away from that awful giant, I’d say them. No matter the cost.”

David didn’t respond, he just pressed his lips against Jack’s forehead and closed his eyes tightly, as if he could shut out the world for seven hours.

 

There were a few moments where David truly regretted the way his life had turned.

The moment when he realized that he was going to be going towards his almost certain death in trousers that sorely needed patching fit into that category.

No one in town was there except his family, and the mayor to the sidelines after shaking David’s hand with too tight a grip and giving him a nasty smile.

They waited for a while, stress radiating off of everyone, until they started hearing the sound of hoofs coming down the bend.

A large party of horses came to a stop on the worn cobblestones, and David swallowed hard as their riders dismounted.

One woman who couldn’t have been any older than Sarah stepped forward and gave David a critical look. 

He’d heard so many tales about the people going on the journey: warriors, mages, craftspeople. Nothing, though, could have prepared him for standing face to face with Princess Katherine.

David was a few inches taller than her, but she held herself with an energy that managed to make him feel small. Her hair, even darker than David’s, was pulled back into a braid, and he felt himself wither as she scanned him critically.

He’d never found himself terrified of a single person before, but Princess Katherine, Heir to King Joseph, made him want to run in the opposite direction.

And then she opened her mouth.

“Are those your only trousers?”

David blinked, taken aback. “Excuse me?”

“Your trousers. They are awful. Not at all proper for our journey.”

David could feel Sarah bristling behind him, and cast a warning glance over his shoulder, a desperate  _ stand down. _ “Your Highness, not all of us are blessed with new clothes whenever we request them.”

He met her gaze firmly despite his heart going a million miles an hour, keenly aware that if the giant didn’t kill him, this woman might. There was a moment of bristling silence, and then she laughed, surprisingly bright.

“You are interesting, Pants Boy. We shall fetch some new clothes for you tonight, just say your farewells and we shall set off.”

 

Les went first, immediately clinging to David with everything that he had. “You have to come back,” he choked out against David’s shirt.

“I will,” David said, and immediately felt his heart sink. Little white lies, he told himself, just something to make them all a little less scared.

His mother took Les’s place, murmuring under her breath and clutching David like he was ten again. In a flash she was gone too, out the door with her hand on Les’s shoulder, and Sarah stepped forward before Jack came like a whirlwind through the door, breathing heavily and stopping with his hands on his knees when he saw David.

“Thank god,” he panted, and Sarah smiled softly despite the situation.

“I will wait outside, Davey.”

As soon as the door clicked shut, Jack took one step and pulled David the rest of the way into a desperate kiss. David practically melted, holding Jack as close to him as possible and praying that he’d be able to leave the world behind as long as he kept kissing Jack.

“Jack,” he said, pulling back for a second. “Jackie.” Jack paused, his hands still cupping David’s face. David swallowed hard. “If I survive--”

“When,” Jack interrupted, and David sighed, closing his eyes.

“Jack--” he started, and Jack kissed him fiercely, tears in his eyes when he stepped back.

“When you survive,” Jack said again. “Say it, please.”

David exhaled slowly, reaching forward to wipe away Jack’s tears, his eyes open again. “When I survive.” He leaned forward and kisses Jack softly. “Meet me in the Capital City. In the Main Square.”

Jack nodded wordlessly and mustered up a smile, brushing David’s hair back. They stepped towards the door together, and Jack put his hand on the doorknob before he turned and pulled David towards him. David allowed himself to be brought forward, and he buried his face in Jack’s shoulder, refusing to cry.

Eventually, Jack stepped away, kissing David briefly before he smiled, even though it didn’t reach his eyes. He opened the door and walked away, and Sarah held the door open for David as he followed.

The two stood there for a moment, Sarah pursing her lips and looking down.

“I love you,” she said quietly.

“I love you, too.”

She hugged him tightly and pulled back before he could say anything, swiping at her eyes and walking away.

 

They were all sitting around a fire, which didn’t do anything to stop the fact that David’s nerves were off the charts.

There’d been a brief moment of introduction before they’d set off for the first bit of their journey, so everyone else, the actual heroes who belonged on the mission, took the after-dinner opportunity to forcibly insert David into their social circle.

“I am Jojo,” said one girl, one of the few humans in the circle. “My father is head of the King’s Guard, so the Capital sent me with the Princess.”

“I have a name,” Princess Katherine said, seeming more tired than angry. 

“And I, a job,” Jojo snipped back, grinning widely nonetheless. Then, “Princess.”

She groaned, and then pointed at David. “You would not dare.”

“You want me to call you…” He trailed off hesitantly. “Katherine?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She huffed, reminding David of Les at his most petulant. “I have my reasons, Pants Boy.”

“My name is David.”

“And mine, Katherine. So use it.”

He… couldn’t argue with that. So he didn’t.

Someone cleared their throat, and David turned, his voice catching in his throat.

He’d never seen one of the Winged so close before.

The Winged were what Ancient Ones called Angels. Huge, bird-like wings, often a falcon, eagle, or hawk’s. But this one’s were those of a hummingbird, laying to her sides in bright, jewel-like colors.

“Rafaela,” she said, extending a hand, but impossibly far away for David to shake. He sat there for a silent moment before someone whispered in his ear.

“Kiss your fingertips and extend your hand.”

He did, and Rafaela dipped her head, bringing her hand back down to her lap. “The Western Winged,” she said, and it took him a moment to realize that she was talking about her people. She nodded to the only other Winged in the circle, this one with darker wings and shaggy hair like Jack’s.

(He looked a lot like Jack, actually, except his skin was just a half-shade lighter and his eyes a little darker and his cheekbones sharper. All in all, he looked like Jack, but he wasn’t Jack, not in a million ways that made David miss him even more.)

“Finch, of the Eastern Winged,” she said, and David felt a wave of relief rush over him when Finch simply dipped his head in respect. David nodded back, and turned back to Rafaela, but she simply blinked at him, as if puzzled that he expected anything else.

The whisperer sighed, and David jumped and turned to her.

“She will not ever say much, do not expect it. I am the first she met, and yet she barely spares a word for me.” She smiled sweetly, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “You may call me Buttons. I am the sent Dryad.” David found himself distracted for a moment by her freckles, which seemed almost more like emeralds, sparkling and standing out against the deep brown of her skin. The information flipped over in his brain for a moment, and he frowned.

“You are not counted as a citizen, but one of you is sent into danger?”

Her smile faded momentarily but returned quickly. “We worry not for citizenship, we only yearn for His Majesty’s fair treatment. I am here not to fight, but to guide. Anywhere where my kind lie, I will help us find our way.”

“That’s…” He faded off without meaning to, and she reached forward, brushing her finger against his forehead in another custom he found himself unfamiliar with.

She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, and when she opened them David saw a new sort of sorrow in her eyes. “You are just as brave as I. Perhaps braver.”

He blinked, and she smiled hesitantly, her chin quivering just barely. There was a moment of silence among the circle, and then Rafaela spoke up.

“Where do you nest, David?”

“Your home,” Buttons said quietly, and he nodded at her in thanks.

“Marlin’s End, a farming village. We were chosen out of all the Human towns and villages to bring forth a Chosen.”

“And the Chosen was you,” a slightly older woman said, a long staff in her lap.

He nodded, and he saw Katherine sit forward out of the corner of his eye. 

“What is your gift? Why did they send you, out of all of them?” 

“I…” He trailed off. “I…”

“You have nothing?” He opened his mouth, but she continued, her words growing sharper. “You come from a farming town that produces the tiniest fraction of the kingdom’s crops. Your family contributes nothing to the town, you yourself apparently have no great skills and not even a hint of anything special!” Her eyes narrowed as her eyebrows curved down, making a fierce slant. “So tell me, tell all of us, David Jacobs of Marlin’s End, what have you that we lack?”

He looked her directly in the eye, summoning every shred of his courage and praying to the skies that his death would not come so soon. 

“I am simply the one that they most wanted to die.”

 

The fire had gone out only a short while after it had been used to light torches and lamps to guide people to their tents. As David walked to where he’d been directed, a candle in hand, his name was called softly. He turned quickly, squinting into the woods, but he saw nothing.

Someone behind him sighed, and he turned again to see Buttons.

“You musn’t pay attention to them. They shall try to lure you to the woods, and all one can do is resist.” She relit her candle on David’s. “Please, take no mind of the Princess’s words. She is hurting very badly, and although it is no excuse, it is--”

“An explanation,” David filled in, and smiled when she looked shocked. “I have read books on Dryad sayings. Your people are wise.”

She smiled back. “And yet ignored. Please, just let her become acquainted with you before you really listen to her words. She has been through an ordeal.”

He nodded, and she placed a hand on his arm. “So have you, though?”

“I would not quite call it an ordeal,” he said, and she shook her head.

“But I would. You bear grief quite gracefully, David. It is admirable.”

“You flatter me,” he said, and she laughed.

“I speak the truth.” She paused, pursing her lips. “You are aware, I am led to assume, of my people’s senses?”

“You are empaths, are you not?”

She sighed. “Not quite. We are gifted and cursed with feeling the change of emotions, the history of them. The people one loves, and those who love them. Strong emotion, emotion that is volatile, emotion that builds over time. So while I must confess I have not known the Princess long, I can tell you this. I have felt the weight of the people she loves and the people who do not return the love she once gave freely.”

David blinked, and she frowned. “How shall I say it? She will not believe that you care until she herself is ready to believe that you care. She requires time, and you must trust that she will, one day, believe you, as long as you care. She has great capacity for joy, I believe, around the right people.” She shrugged. “Perhaps it does not mean much to you, but I reason it does to her.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she smiled, her lips just barely curving up in the moonlight.

“Sleep well,” she said, turning away with her candle, and then stopped only a few feet away. “And David?” She turned back. “For what it is worth, and it may not be much, your Jack loves you, very much.”

He smiled faintly, raising a hand in a goodbye, and they walked their separate ways.

 

Only a few minutes later, he knew a whole new form of fear.

Seeing Katherine as before, glaring and angry, made him want to run the opposite direction. But seeing her look up when he entered the tent, her eyes red with tears, made him freeze in his place.

If the Princess could cry over what was ahead of them, he didn’t know how to be anything but petrified.

“Are you…” He trailed off when Katherine stood up hurriedly, swiping at her eyes.

“I am fine,” she insisted, but her voice breaking on the last word was telling.

“You do not have to be,” he said, and she met his eyes, looking confused. “Katherine, you…. you are allowed to be afraid. You are living, and we are…” His head hurt for a moment as he comprehended it. “We are marching across the kingdom to face a giant that no one had ever come back to describe. We are all scared, and you do not need to be the exception.”

The few remaining tears on her cheeks shone in the faint candle-light. “I apologize,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse, and he hesitated before he sat down beside her, setting the candle down.

“Would you like to… discuss it?” He asked, the syllables somehow both rushing over each other and moving like molasses.

She shook her head, her falling braid unleashing a few more strands of her hair. “All matters are quite alright, I swear to you.”

He hummed, and they sat in silence for a while, listening to the crackle of those still rustling around for their things before they slept, one of the older women on the quest taking first watch.

 

As a matter of fact, nearly nothing was quite alright.

He wasn’t aware that Princess Katherine knew things that no one beyond the leader of each Chosen community was supposed to know. He didn’t know that her predicament was more like his than anyone else’s.

And he especially didn’t know that out of all the beings in the Kingdom who knew the secrets that Katherine did, only one other being was not supposed to.

And he didn’t know that the one other was currently packing her bags, ready to leave Marlin’s End in the morning.


	2. to the end of time/to the end of the earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another journey starts off, wishes are made, hearts are damaged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!!!! this is sad.

As soon as David left, Sarah ran ahead of her mother and brother so she could make it outside of town first.

Once she passed the last home, she stumbled to the scraggly bush near her and threw up what little water she had drank in the morning before she dry heaved until she felt her mother’s hand rubbing soft circles against her back.

He should have ran. God, he was so stupid for staying.

She stood up unsteadily, and Esther wrapped her up in a hug, sheltering her against the cold wind and not caring one bit about any mess there might be.

Sarah clung to her, letting them become an anchor, rooted against the rocky soil as they heard Les’s footsteps approaching, as they heard waves colliding with the pebbles on the shore, as they heard the wind beating against them.

Sarah needed an anchor. She needed to be held still, held back from lighting the entire town until it blazed into a bonfire and they all knew how to hurt like she did.

“Sarah,” her mother warned, pulling away and breaking any illusion of strength. “I can feel you brewing, darling, it will not do any good.”

“But maybe it will,” Sarah tried to insist, but it sounded weak from the moment it left her lips.

Esther sighed, stroking her hair. “Hurt in exchange for hurt only proves hatred, not equality.”

Les spoke up that time. “That isn’t true.”

“Not always,” Esther said. “But it is all we have.”

“We don’t have more?”

“We have each other,” she said. “We have food, and we have water, and we have air to breathe. More than others have, and exactly what we need.”

“David,” Sarah said quietly, and Esther sighed.

“He will live. He will make it home to us, darlings, I promise.”

Sarah looked over to Les, who seemed so much smaller than his age, shivering in the wind and with terror in his eyes.

“He will,” she said, firmly, so she could try and convince him.

The fear echoing in Les’s eyes didn’t fade, and Sarah couldn’t help but feel the same.

That evening, she headed back into town, a cloak wrapped around her in hope that she wouldn’t be recognized. She made it most of the way to the mayor’s office before he name was called out in a voice she didn’t know, and she just held her thin cloak closer to herself and started to run.

There was a small piece of compensation for their family waiting, likely smaller than it was supposed to be, and essentially useless. No one would sell their family anything, no matter what kind of money they had.

But still, Esther sent Sarah to fetch it, just in case.

She was pointed toward the office by a man much taller than her, who glowered down at her like she was an irritating bug.

She slowed down when she reached the door of the mayor’s office

Before she walked in, she heard the mayor’s slow drawl, accompanied by the voice of a man whos accent, and diction, was so unfamiliar to her that at first she thought she might have been hearing things.

“You need not worry, sir,” the mayor said, and Sarah could almost picture the way he sneered. “They picked the boy, quite astutely. The girl is far too powerful.”

“She would die, regardless,” the voice said, and Sarah’s heart trembled, knowing she was about to discover a secret cloaked in mist and wrapped in chains.

“And you are sure?”

“The king has ensured it. No matter who is sent, the mission will fail. The giant is too powerful, and the land around it is covered in traps the beast has set.”

_ The king has ensured it. _

Sarah didn’t wait any longer, she just ran, shoving past people, desperate to reach home again, to be able to breathe air that wasn’t burning with hate.

Esther looked up when she burst in. “How much is it?” she asked, and Sarah felt herself choking, sweaty hands closing around her throat, a voice whispering in her ear that Esther had lost too much, she needed those precious few days left of the possibility of hope.

“He was busy,” she said shortly, the words brief enough that she could gasp in another breath once they were finished. “I’m going to the shore.”

When she reached the edge of the ocean, she wrapped herself into a ball on the sand, her fingers curling like claws into the small pebbles and grains of sand.

She didn’t even feel her fingers lighting, turning the sand into glass around her until the beach was seemingly frozen, and she was surrounded by ice-clear signs of her own grief.

_ The king has ensured it. _

She didn’t know why he would send his own daughter on a trip he engineered to be a suicide mission. He didn’t know why he would even create a mission like that, why he would require the neighboring kingdoms to send representatives. He could not possibly think that it would earn him any allies when none of the representatives returned.

But if it was truly the trap that the voice had claimed it was, no one would make it back, especially not David.

David, David, David.

Sweet, kind, David, who’d been high-spirited and firey until fourteen, and then everything had happened and he’d started shrinking in on himself, the bags under his eyes had started forming and his shoulders started curling towards him like he could vanish from sight.

And she’d just let him go, let him go straight into a trap that would spell out his doom. He’d die alone, and it was Sarah’s fault, just like before.

He would die if he faced the giant, she thought, tracing her fingers across the rough glass and ignoring the tiny cut it caused on her finger.

She sat there with the waves and the wind before her defeatedness slowly began to fade.

He would die if he faced the giant, but if he never faced it at all… 

It could work. If everyone else died, there would be no way of knowing that he didn’t as well. No one knew his face, they could take new names, they could move somewhere far away with whatever money they received and make a life where no one would hate them.

She regretted her selfishness for a brief moment before she reminded herself of her life. For six years, she’d had only her family and eventually Jack to trust. Three people, with a tentative fourth added out of love for David.

She couldn’t lose David, and this was the only way.

The kingdom, the tribes, the outer lands, everyone else fell behind as Sarah felt her mind run forward and close its fist around the last idea she had.

She would save David no matter what it took, and no matter how many others perished instead. She wouldn’t be to blame again, she would save him and they would run and they would live, finally, after years, and then maybe David could stand up straight and bring back the little spark in his eyes.

 

**Four years ago**

 

_ “What can I do?” Jack said, trying to catch David’s eyes and brushing his knuckles against David’s jaw, tilting his chin up so he could see his eyes below his lashes. _

_ David reached up, taking Jack’s hand and lacing their fingers together, their hands drifting down until they rested on David’s knee. He shook his head slowly. “Jack, I can not trust anyone besides my family. You know that.” _

_ Jack felt his eyebrows furrow. “You don’t trust me?” _

_ David sighed, closing his eyes. “I want to,” he said quietly, opening his eyes. “I truly wish I could, Jack.” _

_ “Then trust me.” _

_ He watched as David squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “It has been two years,” he said, his voice strained. “People have attempted to kill my mother. Sarah had rocks thrown at her when she went to draw water. They set our crops on fire.” His voice broke painfully on the last word, and tears finally leaked out, and Jack felt his breath catch. _

_ Jack had been alone for years, to the point that he hadn’t even noticed it. He didn’t remember his first mother, and he only had vague memories of the second: her arms wrapped around him, her promises that she would never let him go. _

_ Jack wasn’t sure where she was. Dead, maybe. He didn’t know why she was gone. He just knew that she was, and try as he might he could never remember the day he’d woken up and realized she wasn’t there. _

_ But David couldn’t be alone. If he was alone, he would tear himself to shreds, work himself to the bone with no one to care for him, and he would waste away, forgetting sleep and water and food and love. _

_ So Jack couldn’t be alone anymore, either. Because he would stay with David, to remind him of sleep and water and food and love. _

_ He swore that he would always stay by him when he was sixteen years old. _

_ He swore that as tears fell down David’s face, and all he knew was how lean forward and press their foreheads together and whisper kind things, brushing away tears with his free hand. _

_ There was only a few moments of that before Davey opened his eyes, looking right into Jack’s, before he closed them again and kissed him. _

 

Jack had broken his promise. David was out there, on a quest he shouldn’t have been forced onto. David was scared, and probably cold, and surrounded by strangers who wouldn’t understand why fire made him flinch, and who couldn’t smooth the line between his eyebrows.

And when Jack had been alone, he hadn’t known what he was missing. He finally knew, and he’d had someone who filled up the cavity in his heart he hadn’t know had been there.

He’d broken his promise, and in the process, broken his own heart.

There was still a few more promises to keep, though.

_ “Please take care of them.” _

_ “Meet me in the Capital City. In the Main Square.” _

And one back from when Jack was sixteen.

_ “I don’t write like you. I can’t. I never learned like you. But I will write you a love letter every day ‘till I die, if only you believe them.” _

So Jack watched until the last of those making the journey vanished over the horizon, he went home, and he sat at the tiny dinner table, pulling out the paper he bought every week in packs.

_ Dear Davey, _

_ I am so sorry. _

 

Sarah was used to packing quickly. Even though they’d clung to their home with all their might, her family was always on the edge of their seat, ready to run if need be. She couldn’t count how many times she’d walked into David shoving what few things he had into a bag, stammering out that Jack had heard rumors of an attack being planned.

She was grateful that they had someone who could hear those things, even if it had to be Jack.

(She didn’t hold any particular thing against him, it just scared her. Seeing David’s heart held in someone’s hands made her so worried, like she couldn’t stop it if he was hurt.)

So, as soon as Les and Esther headed out to gather what little produce their garden had yielded in the past few days, as the sun began to set, she started shoving her things in her bag.

Her extra pants and shirt, thick socks in case of rain, a threadbare blanket, a stale loaf of bread, a water skin.

She tied her hair back in a firm braid, determined to not need to take anything but the essentials, and skidded, narrowly missing the splintery board of wood that seemed to guard the bedroom, towards the loose board where she kept all she had.

She pulled it up and scraped around for the coins hiding beneath it, finally managed to throw all of them in the pouch on her belt and buckle it shut.

She ran back into the main room, not willing to waste even a speck of time, and took one last look around before she blinked back tears, seized the handle of her bag, and vanished in a flash of light.

When she opened her eyes, Jack was staring at her, looking like he might faint.

“What?” he managed, his voice shaking and his eyes red with obvious tears.

Sarah exhaled shakily. “I have magic, Kelly, there is no time. Please, I need you to inform my mother and brother that I have left before they can start to worry. Tell them not to follow me, I am begging you.”

His lips parted slightly, and finally he said, so quietly Sarah wondered if he could even breathe, “You’re going after him, are you not?”

She nodded, refusing to shed a tear in front of him. “Yes. Please, promise me?”

He mumbled something under his breath, then looked up, tears sparking in his eyes again, but paired with new resolve. “Let me join you.”

“Not until the sun is stolen and the Winged are featherless,” she said, surprising herself by remaining collected.

“Please. Sarah, I know you don’t trust me, but I am begging you. I have to bring him home, or I’ll die.”

“You will not,” she said firmly, stepping forward so she could stare right at him. “You will tell my family and keep them safe until I come back with David.”

“Sarah…” His voice faded off, and she looked away. She had to be selfish. She had to be, or David would die. If she teleported fast enough, she could reach them within a day, and she could save him. She had to be selfish, she couldn’t be slowed down.

She made the mistake of looking back, and looking down at his hands, clutching an envelope so hard the paper had crinkled.

She sighed. “Is that for David?”

He nodded, and Sarah closed her eyes when his tears finally fell.

“I need to give this to him. I need him to have it.” Sarah didn’t speak, but she felt Jack become more desperate, scrabbling at the cuffs of fate around his wrists. “Sarah, I told him to stay. I said I would go. I want, more than anything, for him to be happy. Please. He told me to meet him in the Capital City, but I can’t go not knowing if he will be there.”

“You will slow me down,” Sarah insisted, still not willing to open her eyes. “I can not teleport two at once.”

“I can get horses,” Jack said, his voice filled with tense hope. “They’ll sell them to me, we can ride and move faster than the quest. They have pack horses, they’ll have to rest. We can move quickly and catch up.”

Sarah slowly opened her eyes, and immediately cursed herself.

She could have handled Jack being heartbroken, distraught, crying. But even though his eyes were shining, he was hopeful, a tentative smile breaking open the barrier Sarah had set around the source of her sympathy.

He looked her right in the eye, and she felt her refusal crumbling.

“Fine, but only if you can buy the horses and pack your things quickly so we can leave when the sun rises.”

His small smile split into a beam, and he hugged her tightly before she could flinch away. “I swear to the sky you won’t regret it.”

He was back in what seemed like minutes, announcing that there were two horses tied outside, and in moments, he had a bag slung over his shoulder.

She blinked. “You work quickly.”

He looked down, pursing his lips. “Yes, well. It comes with my life. Do you want to sleep here? I have a bed for guests, you know this.”

Her interest was pricked, but she simply nodded, muttered, “Thank you,” and curled up to shut her eyes before Jack could say anything else.

 

They rode on the path that the quest party had left, the obvious marks of hooves and cart wheels on land that had been traveled across in years.

Sarah breathed deeply, running her thumb back and forth over the reins that were bunched up in her hands.

She felt Jack look over at her, but she still kept her eyes fixed forward, fighting off the chill.

They rode all day long, and Sarah could feel weariness chipping away at her-- she knew she hadn’t slept well, and she knew she was tired, and she could feel herself moving closer to shattering, like a porcelain vase pushed closer to the edge.

But she kept moving. David was more important that stinging eyes and heavy eyelids.

 

“Sarah? Sarah!” She jolted, looking over to where Jack was watching.

“What?”

He motioned for her to stop her horse, and once the sound of hooves came to a stop, Jack dragged a hand down his face. “You almost fell asleep on the horse. Come on, we should rest. It’s been a long day, and we could both use some sleep.”

“We must keep moving,” Sarah said, fighting off fading dizziness. “I may be able to give us energy again,” she offered, and Jack groaned.

“And it will just burn you out,” he said, and when Sarah tried to protest he held up a hand. “I may not know you well, but I know Davey, and he tells me a lot. I am quite aware that magic tires you out, and we need to rest.”

She frowned at him, but it became clear in seconds that he wasn’t surrendering at any point. “Only a few hours,” she conceded, and Jack smiled slightly.

“There’s a spot a mile or so ahead,” he said. “I stayed there for a few days before I found Marlin’s End.”

There it was again, the hints that Jack Kelly had been on his own longer than Sarah was aware. She hadn’t known many people in Marlin’s End before it all happened, but she knew that Jack hadn’t been there before hand-- he had arrived shortly after she and David turned fifteen, and subsequently met David at the well.

There was so much she didn’t know about him, and so much he didn’t know about her.

But when they made camp, and Sarah set out her worn-down blanket to lay on, she didn’t fail to notice how Jack waited until her eyes closed and placed his own blanket over her right before the noise in her head faded to a hum and she fell into the deep pit of slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually have no idea how long it's been, but hopefully this was within two weeks??? idk. i hope yall liked it!!!!! i'm really excited to go more into sarah and jack's dynamic, with their mutual lack of trust in each other but willingness to risk it for davey. this fic, for me, is really about exploring relationships, so it's really cool to get to go into it!  
> anyways!!!! i've got a group project rn, so... i don't know when the next chapter is going to be posted but.... we'll see, i guess.  
> have a lovely day!!!! i hope your new years are going wonderfully!!! (ps if you comment i will owe you my entire heart once i get it back from "blue moon". plug here!!!! everyone read blue moon please it owns my heart)  
> (ok bye)


	3. oh, my heart, it aches to stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shift back over to the quest, and a few quieter moments before the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uhh... hey. here have a chapter. uhhh. yeah.

The second day was easier than the first, and the third was easier than the second.

By the third, Buttons didn’t object when he joined her early in the morning, taking one of the sharp cooking knives to cut apart fruits for everyone to eat in the morning while she crouched close to the small fire to cook meats and eggs.

They sat in silence while everyone slept on the second day, but on the third another woman joined.

David had yet to meet her, besides seeing her sitting guard when they all went to sleep each night. She was the woman with the staff from the first night, he recognized, and Buttons laughed, a joyful, clear noise, when she walked out in the morning to join them.

“Hello, Miss Medda,” she said, laughter still lingering around her voice, and the woman grinned at her, the corners of her eyes crinkling in a way that painfully reminded David of Esther before it all happened.

“Blessed dawn, Buttons. And good morning, David.”

He blinked. “You know my name?”

She laughed, in a full-bodied sort of way that reminded David of someone else. “I would be a damn lousy diplomat if I was unaware of the names of those I am guiding, do you not think?”

Something else sparked his interest. “You are a diplomat?”

She nodded. “In charge of mediating conflict between members of the group and with any beings we encounter on our way, yes.”

David set down his knife. “That is fascinating.”

“It is work, at least. You have been keeping busy as well, I see?” She pointed at the chopped fruit lying in front of him.

“Oh. Yes, I always prepared meals with my mother.” He skinned the fruit off one as he spoke, careful to not look into Medda’s eyes in case it might reveal anything he was thinking. “It is comforting, at least.”

“All beings need comfort,” Medda mused, sitting down on a stump near the fire and sighing. “Skies, I am getting old for this, truly.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Buttons said playfully, looking away from the fire for a moment. “You have not yet aged a day since my roots sprouted.”

“Darling, that is flattering, but I was not yet alive when your roots sprouted.”

“Ah, details,” Buttons said, and David threw cubes of fruit into one of their makeshift bowls.

“Your tree is mature?” he asked, and she turned to him, holding her pan in one hand as she walked back towards him.

“I would not be here if it was not. My tree freed me… Oh, what, Medda? Fifty years ago?”

Medda pursed her lips. “Sounds near enough to be claimed true.”

David felt his mouth hang open slightly. “And your tree…”

“An oak,” Buttons confirmed. “It matured after twenty-eight years of growth.”

“So you are…”

“Seventy-eight, by your human years. Roughly.”

“A baby, really,” Medda said. “Her people are the oldest and wisest I’ve ever known. They are the only reason we know anything about the Ancients in the first place. The last few redwoods to the far West of the Land of Waste? They have stories to tell, David. You must take the chance to visit them, if you ever have it.”

David nodded quickly before the cold wave of reality pulled him underneath again. He would never make it out to travel like he and Jack had planned, he reminded himself. Best to not hope for things that wouldn’t come.

“Any way other than that before,” Buttons said, “I am one of the youngest on the continent that the king controls, and so I was sent. My tree is being carefully guarded, not to worry.”

David had forgotten for a moment that Buttons wasn’t one of the wise old redwoods they had spoken of-- she was trapped under the king’s finger, just like all the rest of the continent’s dryads, and just like the rest of the people on the quest.

Someone yawned behind them, and David turned to see Katherine pulling a tie around the end of her tight braid.

She dipped her head at them, looking confused by their staring. “Hello?” she said after a moment, walking forward to take one knee in front of the fire and warm her hands.

“You rise now earlier than before,” Medda said carefully, and Katherine blinked.

“Yes, I suppose that I have. David, would you like help with that?”

It was David’s turn to be caught off guard. “I… Yes, of course. Thank you, Katherine.” She spared him a hesitant smile, and he found himself smiling back, passing over one of the knives so she could work opposite to him.

There were a few minutes of peaceful quiet, just the sound of chopping and of Buttons’s humming as she cooked, and eventually more started to file in, rubbing sleep away from their eyes.

It felt unnatural to David, seeing everyone in the morning. Warriors became calm and gentle, mages could barely remember to mumble, “Good morning.”

Unnatural, but comforting.

 

Those who weren’t specifically trained to fight were put in groups of two for sitting guard, and David figured that it was just his luck that an awkward night of silence was in store when he and Katherine were assigned for that night.

He was right, for the first few hours, at least. Then, Katherine asked, “What is your village like?” and David paused his previous thought cycle (would Jack like the little creatures they’d found on the side of the road?) to think about what to say.

“Terrible.”

Katherine laughed out loud, then covered her mouth, shocked at the sound. “Why?”

David waved his hand. “All those there have hated my family for years.”

“Oh, I am quite sure that you exaggerate.”

“I am quite sure that I do not.”

He just barely managed to see Katherine’s eye roll by the dim light of their candles. “David, I have known you a few days, and you seem far too unassuming to be detested by anyone, let alone those who spend time frequently in your presence.”

“How does it feel to have missed the mark by forty-five paces?”

Katherine crossed her arms. “Pray tell, then, why does your town so desperately hate you? Not jealousy, I am sure.”

David gaped at her, and she laughed again. “You are… much more rude than I assumed a princess would be.”

“Please, I am not suited for my position. A proper princess would express her concern and disbelief that anyone would find your being unpleasant.”

David smiled at that, and he watched as she smiled back, hesitantly.

The silence became comfortable after that, and they sat in silence while their candles cast their warm light across the lines of Katherine’s face, less harsh in the night than the day.

And eventually, David mustered up the courage. “We are the town curse.”

Katherine looks at him, a question spelled out in her eyes like in Les’s books, the letters large enough for him to read in the little light they have during the night.

“Something, uh. There was an incident with my family, six years back in time. It was… very public, you could say.”

Katherine nodded slowly, and David sighed. “And ever since then, the town has just… been broken. We used to be a fishing town, living off the ocean. And then, after everything… the fish were gone. So we moved to farming, but the crops hardly grew. No rain fell in the winter. That is the way it has been for all six years.”

“They selected you as the scapegoat,” Katherine said, her voice quiet and shaky. David hummed in confirmation.

“So after a year, we moved away from the town, so they would not hurt us.”

“I feel they still did, though?”

“We had to-- have to-- go to the well in town to draw our water every day. My sister, Sarah, was pelted with rocks. My little brother is never allowed near it because of it. A man…” David exhaled, feeling his chest shake. “He attempted to stab my mother.”

He looked over to Katherine and saw her trembling. “Would you like me to stop?” he asked, hardly thinking of the irony of his tale upsetting her more than him.

She shut her eyes tightly. “Is there, pray tell, something happy down the line?”

David paused, debating in his mind for a moment. “There is Jack.”

Her jaw tightened and she nodded. “Tell me of him.”

David looked up towards the ink-dark sky, wondering if he could count the stars, if wishing on each one would magnify his prayers. “I met him a year after everything, at the well. Things were not quite as hostile as they are in this time, and he had just arrived in town, he bought a house for next to nothing after a man abandoned the town and left the house behind. We met, he introduced himself, and I… did not trust him at first.”

“You had not a reason to,” Katherine said quietly.

“No, I did not. But he asked me my name, and I told him, and in the confusion I perhaps drew too much water.” He paused, feeling himself smile despite everything. “And he told me not to dump it out, and that he would lend a hand so I could carry it home. I do not think he realized how far home was,” he said, and Katherine smiled at that, just a shadow of her laugh from before. “But he helped me nonetheless, and when we were nearly arriving, I told him I could take it from there, that he could leave.” He paused, remembering the way Jack’s head had tilted and the question had been spelled out in his eyes before it was on his lips.

“And he asked me what I was afraid of.”

He felt Katherine study him as his previous smile sank. “And I knew right then that I was not, and I would never be, afraid of him.”

“You are in love,” Katherine said, and David liked the way she said it. Not peculiar, or sad, or a question, or an answer. Not a blessing, or a curse, or any kind of enchantment at all. Just truth, simple facts. David loved Jack, with all his heart, and he would have crossed the Earth for him.

“Yes, I am,” David said. “And he, if Buttons is honest, loves me.”

Katherine signed. “She is always honest. She is always correct. It is remarkable, and awful.”

“How so?”

She looked right at him, her dark eyes sadder than David had ever seen. “You do not fear it? Your feelings, your love, on display like the taxidermied heads of beasts?”

He felt words escape him, except they were the only ones he didn’t need. “That is a truly disturbing comparison, Katherine.”

She choked out a laugh, but her mouth didn’t close, and David watched her, confused and almost scared as her eyes flickered shut and her jaw squared.

“Are you…”

“Whatever you are to say,” Katherine warned, her voice tight and strained, “I am not. I am not.”

Whatever David was to say. Later, he’d lie awake when he should have been asleep, thinking about it. Whatever he was to say, she was not. She was not happy, she was not sad. She was neither frightened nor confident. She was not confused, she was not sure. She just was. She was the most palatable, safe version of herself that she could be around the people that would jump on any emotion and rip it to shreds.

David thought about all that later, but as Katherine sat next to him, reining in whatever she deemed too powerful, he just thought it was sad, in a way that could sink into your bones and settle in your skin.

“It is alright to be,” he said quietly, and Katherine slowly breathed in, untensing her fingers one by one.

She opened her eyes and pasted on a neutral expression. “I am not,” she said again, and David knew there wasn’t much else he could get out of her that night.

 

They had set up one of their more solid camps, meant to last for a few days instead of the one night they usually did. David found himself staying up later that night, watching the last of the fire die down. It’d become a sort of practice for him, a way to get his pulse to stop racing every time he saw a spark.

A reminder that the fire died down. That it was temporary.

All things were temporary.

He was finally heading off to the tents when he saw one of the party members he’d only vaguely encountered, a mage from further South than David.

He studied him for a moment, taking note of the dark blue and glowing gold scales scattered across his shoulders and arms and the pointed way he gestured, blazing shapes formed in the pathways his fingers made in the air before him.

“Greetings,” he said eventually, his voice soft but firm at the same time. David couldn’t help but jump, and the mage laughed, even though his back was facing towards David.

“Hello?” David said, hating the way his voice turned up, and the other made one more decisive movement before he turned towards him, seeming to take the two steps carefully.

“I am Crutchie,” he said, and David figured it respectful to not ask why. “David, yes?”

David sighed. “Why must everyone continue to know?”

“Well, we are all quite aware that we must not name you by your trousers, so we take the other option.” Crutchie rubbed at his hip and sat down on one of the chairs that had been cobbled together, seeming eager to get the weight off his right leg.

“If I had known that the continent’s most respected representatives were not as respectful as I had presumed, I would have thought twice before I made the statement,” David said, and Crutchie laughed, a bit too loud when everyone else was supposed to be asleep.

There was a moment of silence, and then, “I was casting a barrier,” Crutchie said, seeming to read David’s curiosity. “The whispers you have surely heard before are increasing, and so I was called upon to provide protection.”

David nodded. “That is your specialty?”

“Oh, yes. I was sent as an agent of defense, more than all other factors. Though I do dabble in other forms of magic.”

“Oh?”

“Mostly the manipulation of objects, the formation of phantoms.” When David shrank back, Crutchie laughed. “Not phantoms as you would think, I assure you. Simple objects that are not quite here, you understand?” When David’s confusion persisted, he pulled up the hem of his pants, showing off the glowing lines making up the lines and circles of where a leg would be. It continued into his shoe, and David couldn’t help but stare.

“My leg, for example. Here, yes. But is it truly real? No. It is constructed of nothing, as nothing can be, and it can vanish with no trace left behind.” He tapped it, and David inhaled sharply at the slight crackling sound. “It does not work as a leg should, of course, there are no joints to move. The circles are show, truly, it just acts as one line connected to my hip. But it meets its purpose, and I have my lads to hold me up.” He smiled at that, clicking his fingers by the pockets on his belt before two small, winged serpents slung out, curling around his forearms.

“They are nothing like the larger serpents, I assure you, they bear no resemblance to dragons. They simply help me through the day, carrying my arms forward so I can step more easily.”

“Fascinating,” David murmured, holding out a hesitant hand for the slightly smaller of the two to sniff at. “How long have you been adjusted to them?”

“A few years, now.” Crutchie’s smile melted down slowly. “I must warn you, the explanation is not a happy story.”

“Oh, I believe myself quite accustomed to it.”

“Well, then. I presume you have gathered, based on the scales, that I am not quite like you?”

David raised one shoulder in a noncommittal gesture, and Crutchie nodded to himself. “I am not. I was one with the sea, originally. One of those with tails for legs?”

“I have heard the stories.”

“I am sure you have. I grew normally, and then, when I was…” He made a little clucking noise. “Perhaps a bit younger than you, I was injured. A large portion of my tail was entirely removed, and those who could shift brought me to the nearby mountains, begging the mages there to heal me. There was no use in half a tail, so they transformed it to one leg, so I had at least some mobility.”

His fingers drummed against his only knee, the other useless as the phantom laid out in a straight line in front of him. “I was given a choice, to return home and move slower for the rest of my years, or to stay with the mages and learn the magic that had saved me. I chose the later, and here I am. Five of your years later, I believe.”

He looked up and winced. “It is far too late for you to be up, your brain will tire. Rest, please.”

After a few minutes of persuasion, David found himself drifting back towards his tent.

When he entered, Katherine was sitting with her legs crossed, her jaw clenched.

He paused, and she looked up abruptly, then launched into a sentence so quickly David thought she planned it.

“I have someone.”

“Oh. Who?”

“Jojo.”

“Oh. Well. Excellent?”

“Thank you,” she managed, before she practically threw her blankets over herself, curled into a ball, and rolled so her back faced away from David.

He honestly could never really tell if the others were as peculiar as he believed, or if he just wasn’t used to anyone beyond his family and Jack.

Probably a mix of the two, he thought to himself, before the world faded to black.

 

The unfortunate consequence of letting your guard down, David realized, was the vulnerability that came with it.

It had never been a problem when it came to Jack, no matter how much Sarah insisted it was. Jack had never hurt him a day in his life, and David knew, deep down, that he never would. Jack was protection, and warmth, and solace, and love, and that was that.

But when David let his guard down around Katherine, it was like holding a cup filled to the brim with boiling water-- he was fine in that moment, but one wrong move and things would spill and burn.

David thought, logically, that he was safe. Katherine had told him about Jojo, after all, and that showed she trusted him back.

But still, he couldn’t help but worry. It came from six years of watching behind your whole family’s backs.

She walked beside him when they were near the woods, clutching at his wrist to keep him from straying when he heard the whispers that snuck through Crutchie’s barrier. She offered her blankets, her warmest socks, a sip from the flask hidden deep in her bag. David accepted each hesitantly, and each time she would smile, just as nervous but growing surer each time.

It was on a particularly cold night that they were huddled in their tent, wrapped in Katherine’s blankets and drinking hot herbal waters that Buttons had provided.

David was making his way through a haphazard explanation of Sarah’s magic.

“It branches from my mother’s side, but the proof has not appeared for many generations. Sarah and I were fourteen years when hers showed, right before the cut-off.”

“Cut-off?”

“Once one reaches fifteen years of age, if their magic does not branch from spells but instead inherited ability, as magic does in my family, the signs will either have appeared or they will not have. If they have not, then we know the person is not in possession of the gifts.”

Katherine hummed under her breath. “So there is truly no chance of your magic?”

David shook his head. “I might have a chance at spells, but they are notoriously bad luck in my family, and I am wary to tempt fate at such a time.”

She frowned. “So your sister received the family… gifts, but you are your young brother were not blessed?”

“Les may yet have Sarah’s powers, since he has not passed the cut-off, but he has not yet shown signs.” He felt his own eyebrows furrow, and he looked down. “Or perhaps he has. I have been gone long enough that it may have occurred.”

“Does it just… happen?”

“It always requires a moment of great stress or fear to unlock. That is the way it has always been.”

“But how do you know?” Katherine pressed, and David tilted his head back, looking up towards the top of the tent.

“I would prefer to not explain. Please just trust me when I say that my words are truth.”

“I trust you,” Katherine said, and then David heard her mumble, “I trust you…”

Concerned, he turned his head to see her. “Katherine? Do you reside within your mind, Princess?”

He expected a reprimand, but all he got was all the color brought back from the blankets draining right out of Katherine’s face, leaving her pale as the mountains.

“Princess,” she murmured. “King, Princess, Heir, sacrifice, _Princess.”_

He felt his own pulse speed up, scared of whatever had captivated Katherine’s mind. “Katherine?” he said again, stronger that time, and she stood deathly still for a moment before she threw herself into his shoulder, choking out terrified gasps and coughs.

After what felt like a lifetime, David was able to pull away a tad to study her face, dark hair unusually loose and hanging around her face.

“Are you alright?” he said quietly, watching for the signs of another bout of panic. “Your mind seemed not quite your own.”

She opened her mouth and seemed to gag, the words tying themselves in knots and into a rope that wrapped around her and chained her to the spire, right in front of the beast.

“My father,” she managed eventually, tears in her eyes. “My father is sending us to our graves.”

 

_She was spinning._

_The castle was nearly empty for once, with her father meeting with his advisors, so the ballroom was abandoned. She had been swaying with Jojo, pressing kisses to her cheeks from time to time, and somewhere along the line Jojo had grabbed her hands and spun quickly, carrying Katherine around in circles while Katherine stumbled and tried to keep moving her feet fast enough as to not fall over._

_They finally stopped when Katherine tripped over the hem of her skirt, stumbling to a stop, and Jojo ran smack into her, causing them to careen onto one of the sofas framing the dance floor, laughing loudly._

_Katherine saw one of the servants smile at the doorway and walk past, and she drew Jojo closer to her, an arm around her waist, to kiss her._

_Jojo giggled, unpinning Katherine’s messy updo while she kissed her. “Can you imagine,” she said when Katherine pulled away to take a few hurried breaths, “how your father would act if he walked in right now?”_

_“There would be a fit,” Katherine said, nearly gleeful at the idea, and drew Jojo back towards her, only to be stopped when she saw the delicate frown on Jojo’s lips. “Stars?”_

_“Does it bother you?” Jojo asked, and Katherine felt her heart drop._

_“Of course it does, you know I want nothing more than to marry you.”_

_“But your father,” Jojo said, and Katherine pursed her lips, knowing that she’d said it so many times that Jojo could guess at that point. “Your father would refuse.”_

_Excuse, excuse, excuse. That was Katherine’s life. This is why I can’t do this, this is why I can’t go out, this is why I can’t marry you, this is why I can’t feed your family, this is why I can’t tell my father to stop his scheming. This is why, this is why, this is why._

I _am why._

_And she was sick of it._

_“Maybe not,” she heard herself say, and before she could take it back, Jojo’s face lit up._

_“You would tell him?” she said, a lightness in her voice that Katherine had never truly heard before._

_It made her brave, probably braver than she should have been._

_“I will tell him now, if it will assure you that I would marry you in a heartbeat.” Jojo beamed up at her, and Katherine stood up before her courage could leave again, vanish into the abyss that had been the past six years. She leaned down to kiss Jojo. “I will go alone, you understand?” Jojo nodded and kissed her one last time._

_“For good fortune,” she said, and it carried Katherine all the way to her father’s doors until she realized she truly had thought nothing through._

_She paused, waiting to hear the tell-tale signs of discussion through the doors._

_“All the information relayed by our scouts stands true. Even if the giant is not as powerful as rumors promise, the traps laid around its lair will do them in before they can even reach it.”_

_Her father._

_“So all that is left is to pick the champions,” said the familiar voice of one of his advisors, and Katherine felt herself pushed to the brink, near ready to explode._

_And then, one by one, memories played by like flashes._

“Listen well, you little eel, you may have your title and your tiara but you will never be queen. I would rather turn my kingdom over to the damn dryads that to the likes of you.”

“Of course one as weak as your mother would produce offspring like you.”

“You fail to grasp the simple concept that you are not to be heard.”

“Keep your head low and perhaps you will be able to live the unextraordinary life you are destined for, my dear.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Why are you here?”

“You are to be a statue. You are not to laugh, or to cry, or to love. This kingdom needs a statue, not you.”

_She felt herself shaking, barely even hearing the next words._

_“I have been considering my daughter.”_

_“Truly?” She hated the sickening interest in his voice._

_“Yes, I could not remove her from the line of succession without… questions being asked. But if she… conveniently perishes… well, it would be a tragedy, but her brothers would be willing to step in and take on the challenge of filling her shoes.”_

_And just as she turned to flee, when she thought the moment couldn’t be more permanently ingrained in her heart as the thing that finally made it sink--_

_“Not that there is ever much to fill, I have ensured that.’_

 

She didn’t tell David everything. She wasn’t ready for that. But she managed to get out the details, and she saw the grief in his eyes when he held out his arms for her to shrink into, coughing out terrified sobs that she had been holding in for years.

 

All the previous mornings, David had woken up slowly, as soon as the sun had begun to touch the ground in front of their tent.

But that morning, he woke up with a start, sitting up with a jolt to find Katherine sleeping at the foot of his matress. He looked down at her, curled into a small ball and clutching at her sleeves, and he felt his heart drop again when he remembered her words from last night.

He didn’t have time to worry, though, before a shrill scream cut through the air, and the world snapped to a halt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyways!!!!! mild cliff hanger!!!!!! yeehaw!!!! its a good time writing this fic believe me  
> ALSO if you have any questions feel free to message me on tumblr.hell @penzyroamin if u want to know more about the mythology, culture, etc etc of this little world i have in my head!!!!!!!  
> next chapter is going to jump back over to jack and sarah, so we'll see how that goes. have a lovely morning/afternoon/night where ever you are, and thank you for reading!!!!!!  
> (p.s. comment and i'll owe you hand pressed flowers and a bar of soap i took from a hotel)


	4. you're bound/you're bound/you're bound to lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack, Sarah, a fading trail, and a ticking clock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all so it has been like a MONTH and i am very sorry for that but!!!!! have a chapter as an apology!!!! it's just barely 3K BUT there is some hopefully interesting stuff so Let's Get To It!  
> (also, btw, the chapter title is from "nothing changes", which wasn't on the album for hadestown but at least at one point, i don't know if it is any more, on the soundtrack)

**** It was the third night when it began to rain.

The sky had been so dark that Sarah and Jack had somehow failed to notice the clouds rolling in until heavy raindrops were soaking through Sarah’s threadbare coat.

“Sarah!” Jack yelled over the sound of thunder, and her head whipped towards him, her pulse spiking.

He motioned for her to stop, and as soon as he drew close enough to her, he threw a pack to her. She caught it with minimal fumbling, and she looked inside.

“We need to make camp,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear. “If we don’t, it will be impossible for us to continue as long as we need to.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. Jack was useful, in that way, although it felt odd to say about a person. She’d grown up limitless, at least within the borders of where they could go safely. She could build anything, create anything, explore her powers infinitely, and there were never any real repercussions when her life consisted of the most bare-bones essentials and nothing else to lose. No harm would be brought to her if she missed a day, unconscious on the floor. All she would have received was a sore back the next day and perhaps some anxious tutting on her mother’s part.

But traveling quickly, with a life-or-death goal that could destroy the one thing that Sarah had always known, was real. And if she missed a day, if she closed her eyes and didn’t wake up until the sun rose twice, that was David’s candle flickering out, without a match in sight.

And so, Jack calmed her down. He stopped her before she reached the limit, he placed a hand on her shoulder when she strained her jaw and closed her eyes, praying for one last burst of energy, he reminded her that her loss would not save anyone.

Interesting, really, the way that he held David’s heart and Sarah’s mind. All it took Jack Kelly was a few days to have anyone depending on him.

That terrified her.

Even as he proved helpful and kind and genuinely caring, she hated the process of slowly beginning to trust him. She had trusted, she had trusted, she had trusted, back when she had no reason to ever think that she shouldn’t have, and then she’d gotten it spit in her face. No one gave her the benefit of the doubt, no one offered her what she had offered them, no one trusted  _ her  _ when the chips were down.

She had learned to accept that, and yet there they were, making camp under the closest thing they could find to shelter, and Sarah, somehow, found herself sleeping with both eyes closed.

 

She woke up after Jack, another surprise. It was a time of surprises, she thought, but the worst came in only a few moments.

She opened her eyes to see Jack pacing, fingers in his hair and murmuring under his breath.

“Jack?” she said, a sort of prompt to reveal whatever news already had her pulse moving far too quickly.

He turned to her quickly, and she saw how his lip trembled before he clenched his jaw, like he was steeling himself to face the wind.

“The tracks are fading,” he choked out, and Sarah felt herself drain away into the ground.

 

The rest of the day had been spent in blind panic, chasing after what little tracks were left, smooth divots in the ground left by wagon wheels that were so close to being filled up by mud and runoff.

Sarah didn’t even think the whole day. She didn’t stop to worry, she couldn’t. She just moved forward as quickly as she could, shaking her head whenever Jack asked if she needed a break, and she prayed to the skies that it wouldn’t rain the next day.

Finally, Jack had convinced her to stop for the night, and it was only when they were huddled in the darkness, under every layer they had to stave off the cold, that Sarah spoke.

“I can not lose him. I did not even stop to think… If I lose him, Jack…” She trailed off, and she hated how weak her voice sounded. She was always strong, sure, and determined, with the steel in her voice reflecting it. But instead of that, she just sounded frail.

“If I lose him, Jack, I will never once be able to live with my soul again.” She swallowed hard. “I will have failed him. How can I fail? When he is counting on me? When they are counting on me?” She shook her head. “He acts as if he does not hold my life together, our lives together. As if our mother would live to see each morning if she knew he would not.”

She received only complete silence from Jack, and wondered if he had already fallen asleep. She would have preferred that, if she told herself the truth.

 

When they woke up in the morning, they just kept going.

Jack didn’t know if they were on the right trail anymore. He was leading them along any path he could find, frankly, in the desperate hope that it was the right one. If they lost the path, they lost David, and they lost hope. They couldn’t lose any of that. He wouldn’t let them.

Sarah was silent for hours on end, only speaking in single syllables when Jack asked her questions-- do you need to stop, do you want something to eat, are you tired?-- so Jack comforted himself.

The unfortunate fact of the matter, though, was that all he truly had for comfort was David. Everything good went back to him.

Fireplaces, Jack thought. Being huddled next to a fireplace, drinking hot tea there, laying on blankets with his head in David’s lap while David read from a book of Ancients’ poetry.

Fresh food. Fruit in the springtime, a rare flourishing tree, buying some at the market and bringing it back to David so he could have something nice for once.

Sunlight. Spreading his arms when he walked outside, the first bit of summer sun shining through, David laying across the beach and practically glowing.

It was hopeless trying to find something happy, because all it did was remind Jack that he didn’t know how to be happy without David.

Neither of them did.

David was every single sunrise and every shirt Jack had that the wind can’t pierce through. He was glasses of milk in the mornings and whispered promises and freckles and moles that you can shape into the outlines of letters and words. He was everything good. 

Everything good was David, and David was everything good.

And so Jack comforted himself with the thought that maybe one day he’d get everything good back, but without the bitterness to it. That one day, he’d have fresh food that they wouldn’t have to sneak and city sunrises and sunlight without an end.

He just wanted to be happy with the person he loved.

And instead, there he was. Soaked to the bone, the wind biting through every inch of his clothing so it could grab at his skin, hungry and tired and literally watching David disappear before his eyes every time he couldn’t tell if they were following tracks or just some random trace of hope. 

They kept going, though. It wasn’t as if they could stop.

 

Jack tried to cover up his shock when Sarah spoke, and she didn’t take any offense from how miserably he failed.

“My mother has always clung to David,” she said, and Jack frowned.

“I would think she would cling to all of you. You’re all she has.”

Sarah raised one shoulder, refusing to commit to a yes or no. “She came very close to losing David before,” she said, not wanting to dive too far into the labyrinth when she had lost her ball of string three turns ago. “He is more mortal, in her eyes. Les and I have never fallen out of her grasp in that way.” She paused. “And I remind her too much of my father, I believe.”

The last few words floated in the night air like static, right above their heads and then beginning to drift up towards the finally cloudless sky. It was so much unsaid all wrapped into a neat bundle, six years worth of David’s fear and Esther’s silence and Sarah’s gritted teeth packaged up and sent to Jack Kelly with the hope that he wouldn’t throw it away.

“That sounds difficult,” he said eventually. “You all have suffered so greatly, it feels unfair that you do not receive the same comfort that he does.”

That surprised Sarah, the idea that he would ever take her side in any way over David’s. In reality, though, wasn’t he taking David’s? David was always the one saying to Sarah that he wished their mother would worry for Sarah the same way, that she would hold Sarah the way she held David, that she would let her be hurt like David.

But in the end, it never left the space between David and Sarah. Esther was too broken, they knew, for her life to be disrupted any more.

Still, though, when Sarah looked to Jack and only saw quiet sympathy, she couldn’t help but feel like it was the first time in years anyone beyond her brothers had ever bothered to truly see her.

 

Jack woke up to hear Sarah muttering frantically. He opened his eyes to see her yanking her hands back and forth, faint glowing shapes following her fingers. He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“Sarah?”

She turned to him, her eyes wide open, and she shook her head once and flicked her hand towards him. He felt an invisible hand pressed over his mouth.

“Something is coming,” she said quietly. Jack whipped around, checking behind him, but before he could take note of anything, chains seemed to lock around his body, and he was pulled back around to face Sarah.

She only gave him an apologetic look before she went back to her work, her words becoming increasingly jumbled as they spilled out of her mouth at high speed, desperation bleeding into her work.

Jack watched, his heart echoing in his ears, as Sarah’s voice rose until she was nearly screaming, her eyes shut tight and her movements jagged and sharp.

The rest of the forest was quiet; even their horses were struck silent.

And then Jack saw the dark shape looming over her head.

It didn’t even seem material, more of a shadow than anything else. It rose like a wolf, snapping and snarling at the air around it as it grew until it surrounded the space behind Sarah.

In Sarah’s hands, a small shape was forming, like a jackrabbit-- bouncing and glowing bright blue. Not nearly enough.

Jack fought at the grip around him, trying to shake himself back and forth, trying to shout for Sarah to turn, to watch out, to duck, anything.

The illusion of a mouth opened in the darkness behind Sarah, and Jack felt every ounce of his spirit shatter and heal and force its way out of its chains.

Three things happened, in quick succession.

Jack’s mouth snapped open, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, something stripped down and terrified and savage.

Sarah turned faster than light, and the shape exploded out of her hands, a giant glowing dragon bursting towards the darkness behind her.

And Jack threw himself forward, knocking Sarah to the ground just as shadowy jaws snapped where her head had been.

Jack could have shut his eyes so tight his head hurt for days, but he still would have seen the apparition Sarah had created spit fire that looked more like ice towards the shadows, and the blaze of light that followed as the dark wolf shattered like glass.

They both watched, silent, as the dragon shrank back down to a jackrabbit, jumping back towards Sarah and nosing its way under her hand. She stroked its head a few times, and with a little  _ chrr _ , it vanished into nothingness.

Sarah turned towards Jack, and he finally realized that she was sobbing.

 

When Sarah managed to control herself, she tried to apologize.

She didn’t make it through half of it before Jack cut her off. “You just saved our lives,” he said. “You have all the right to be scared.”

She rubbed her eyes, and then, shocked by the cold all over again, started to wring her hands for any semblance of warmth. Jack passed his gloves over without a question and helped her work them over her stiff fingers.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

They sat quietly, Jack examining Sarah like she was some odd kind of specimen. Not like the townspeople had, as if she was some writhing creature on their operating tables. No, to Jack she was some sort of unfamiliar wonder.

She tried to think of the last time anyone had looked at her like that. It had been David, of course. Why did everything have to journey back to him? It was a well-worn path, so deep into the fabric of Sarah’s self that her train of thought could never dislodge from it, just chug right past her sense and her worries right into her heart.

She was tired of it.

Tired of thinking of David so often it made her stomach hurt. Tired of worrying, tired of caring. Tired of not trusting Jack, of trusting Jack, of not wanting to trust Jack. Tired of love, tired of hate, tired of living. Tired of that forsaken train.

Skies, she was tired.

“I was so angry at her. So many years, Jack, I was furious.”

Jack’s eyes were sad, and weary, and so stripped down that she couldn’t even see what had been the layers wrapped around the grief. “At who?”

“My mother. For, for, for… for…” She choked on the words, a meltdown brewing. “For loving him more.”

“Oh, Sarah.”

She was only gaining momentum. “Of course they  _ need  _ me. They depend on me, I am the walls above their heads and the food they eat and the only reason they and the town did not perish. Of course she is  _ thankful _ . And yet who does she love? David. Les. Her innocent children, those not to blame. Those who don’t carry his curse.”

“Who’s curse?”

She laughed. It was too bitter on her tongue. “Who falls into your mind, Jack Kelly?”

They were quiet again.

“She loves you,” Jack said, hesitance coloring his words. “I know she does, she just doesn’t know how to tell you.”

“I was fourteen,” Sarah spit out. “Fourteen, and yet she looked at me with fear in her eyes.”

“I am sorry, truly.”

“It was never your fault. You were not even there.”

“I wish I was. I could have helped. Shown her that your magic does beautiful things. It saved us, it built your home.”

“You needed to arrive afterwards, Jack. You needed to gather the pieces, to show David that his life was worth waking up each morning for. He needs you.”

“He needs you, too.”

“My family needs me so that they can survive. They need him so they can live.”

 

Another day of travel, and Sarah felt her heart tighten when she reached into their supply bags and didn’t find enough food for any real kind of meal.

They made what they had last as much as they could, putting half of it aside for the next day, and ate slowly, like they thought they could trick themselves into feeling full.

A thought came to her about halfway through, and she looked over to where Jack’s face was so faintly outlined by their dying lantern.

“How did you have food this plentiful?”

He took a bite and chewed slowly; whether to make it last or avoid the question, she did not know. 

“I stored food away,” he said eventually. “I knew there might be a day where it would be needed. If your family’s crops suffered. Or if…” He paused, and Sarah almost thought she saw a shining tear through the darkness. “If David ever grew weary of it all. Of hiding, of dodging. If he ever wanted to just, to simply… leave. With me.” Another pause. “Or without me. As long as he could have been happier.”

Sarah felt sick to her stomach. “I never knew you…”

“Loved him? Yes, I do. So much I some days feel like ripping my heart out and burying it six feet down below so he can’t touch it. So that I am not vulnerable.” He took a deep breath. “Sarah, you must understand that watching your brother suffer is the hardest thing I have ever done. I hated myself each day, but he always told me I had to stay quiet. So I was not hurt, so one of us could be happy, at least.”

Sarah met his eyes through the darkness just as he said. “He never truly understood that I would have rather died than watch in silence.”

“And now he is gone,” she said. “And we are left behind.”

“Not quite,” he said, and she laughed, the sound crafting itself into something sharper than a knife.

“Jack, see through the mirage you have created. This is hopeless.”

“No,” he said firmly, and she got the idea that it was more for himself than her. “If I lose hope, than I have lost David forever.”

Neither of them voiced how that sounded worse than death.

They did not speak for hours, just stared up at the infinite impossibilities above them as their lantern died down until their only light came from above.

Finally, Sarah heard Jack’s breaths slow down, and she closed her eyes, letting herself disappear into nothingness. 

 

All the other mornings, they had woke as the sun rose, ready to begin it all again.

 

That morning, they woke to the sound of screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhh yeah so hope you guys enjoyed a real glance at what sarah can do!!!!!! this was sad to write ngl but i powered through it with the help of dayquil and lemon tea!!!!!  
> if you liked this chapter, pretty pretty please leave me a comment and perhaps rb the post from my tumblr, @penzyroamin!!!! you can also come chat with me about the mythology, etc!!!!!  
> next chapter is more Quest so hooray for that! hopefully i'll get it out faster fgshdgshgds. but if i don't, i am sorta considering leaving some fic recs for things i'm really digging right now because i want to boost some of the other badass fic writers in this fandom!! so tell me if y'all want that, ig.  
> have a lovely morning/afternoon/night depending on where you are and when you read this <3 peace out folks


	5. little moonshine ain't no sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We return to the quest, and certain events unfold in a certain period of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello yes! it is i back after nearly a month to bring you this hugo nominated mess!  
> (oh yeah, btw, ao3 as a whole was nominated for a hugo award. congrats u can put that on ur resume.)  
> so uhhhhh. yeah. sorry this took so long sjdhsjghdjsgds life has been Busy As Fuck but uh. here's 4.2k to appease you? i hope you enjoy!  
> (also the chapter title is from "our lady of the underground", from hadestown, as usual!)  
> last thing that happened with these darlings, they heard a Scream! so let's see what's happening now!  
> also just a heads up that this chapter has some death in it???? it's not super graphic but the mention of it might be pretty gross in your eyes. message me on tumblr (@penzyroamin) if you want details

They were sprinting before they knew what was happening.

David ran in front of Katherine, both of them hastily buckling on their belts and clutching at the handles of the swords that had been forced upon them despite their lack of skill or any experience.

They finally stopped at the clearing, chests heaving, and Katherine’s voice was tinged with panic. 

“Who’s there!” she yelled, and there was a stifling, frozen silence.

Then, another shriek, and Katherine seemed to go cold. David turned to her, reaching for her arm. “Katherine? Katherine, what do you--”

“Jojo,” she said, and the mere whisper turned the air around David to ice. “ _ Jojo!” _

She took off again, and David ran after her, screaming her name and begging her to stop.

She was deceptively fast, and David was slowed down by his new shoes, fancier and probably worth more than anything he had ever owned. It went on for too long before David finally caught her arm and pulled her back to his chest.

It was Katherine’s turn to scream, and she turned around to face him. The sight of her sent him reeling.

Her cheeks were red, and there were tears running down her face, dripping onto her collar. She screamed again, no words, just an incoherent mess of rage and fear. David just held onto her, letting her screams rack through her body as she pulled and tried to fight away from him.

It happened to Sarah, sometimes, when she remembered too much. The best David had ever known how to do was keep them safe, and the closest Katherine could get to safe in that moment was as far away from whatever the hell it was that was screaming.

He knew one thing for sure: it wasn’t Jojo.

Finally, words started coming out of Katherine’s mouth, demands for him to let her go after Jojo, please David, she needed to save her.

“It is not her,” he said over and over again. “It must be a trick, Katherine, it is simply all a trick.”

He didn’t know how long it took before she sagged into his body and screamed into his chest.

Eventually, everything faded-- Katherine’s yelling, the voice, even the forest seemed oddly quiet.

Katherine pulled herself away from him, wiping at her eyes roughly. “Back to camp,” she muttered. “Back to camp.”

“Katherine--” he said, not knowing how he was going to complete the sentence. She completed it for him.

“You are right.”

They walked back at practically a snail’s pace, making sure to retrace their steps so closely that David sometimes thought his shoes were making the same indentations over his past footsteps.

When they finally wound up back at camp, the sun was only just then fully risen over the hilltops. David blinked against the light as it rose, and he turned to see Katherine squinting towards him. She laughed, suddenly, and he felt himself jump.

“My apologies,” she said, her smile dropping quickly. “You were just…” she waved a hand in a circle. “The sun, it is like your halo.”

He sighed. “I think you do not know the extent of what I would give for you to be happy long enough for your smiles to last.”

Her lips twisted down. “Every being that I speak with demands a smile, David.”

“I wish not for an empty smile to look at, I wish for your happiness,” he said, and she looked down.

“My apologies.”

“I have no need for your apologies. You have yet to hurt me.”

Silence, again. Less haunting that time, instead softer.

“She is alright,” Katherine said. “I have checked in her tent, she sleeps peacefully. You were correct all along.”

“Well, thank the stars that she is safe.” He walked towards where their fire from last night had burned, steeling himself to start a new flame.

Katherine caught his wrist. “Would you like me to light it?”

He blinked, caught off guard. “I would, thank you.” She nodded and walked over, taking the flint that lie next to the circle of rocks, and he instead walked over to where their carts of supplies were waiting for him.

A few minutes later, there was a crackling fire, and David was cutting up food. Katherine stood next to him for a while, rubbing her hands together, and David let her gear herself up. He knew she’d talk when she was ready.

“I was thinking,” she said eventually, each of the words coming out manufactured and rehearsed, “wondering, in truth, if you would teach me.”

He set the knife down and looked up. “Teach you?”

“To cook,” she added quickly. “I would like to be able to help prepare the meals. I cannot fight, I cannot cast spells, so I must find a way to be useful.”

David almost asked if that had been her train of thought her whole life-- how she could commodify her existence, what she could do for others. He thought better of it.

“Of course,” he said, and the tension seemed to leave her shoulders.

“Thank you.”

They talked as they worked, David occasionally offering praise or corrections, and both of them telling stories.

They started out as small, little things-- light things, things that didn’t leave the other blinking at them when they shared them nonchalantly. 

The time Les had found a rabbit in their garden and wanted to keep it as a pet.

The time Katherine and Jojo had broken into the royal kitchens and smuggled armfuls of food to Katherine’s bedroom.

The time Sarah was twelve and piled vegetables under her covers so that she could sneak out of the house.

The time a cook spilled hot soup all over Katherine’s brother’s lap, and Katherine had to bribe everyone in the room to not tell her father so that the cook wasn’t fired.

The time Jack tried to cook something for David and his family, and the smoke had sent David out back, quaking and choking on air for skies knew how long.

They stopped talking at that point.

Buttons eventually wandered out of her tent, nodding at David with a smile as he handed her a plate. Then Medda, then Rafaela, then Crutchie, and David was hit just as Jojo walked towards them that they weren’t… hurrying.

No matter the importance of their mission, they worked without a rush. There was no urgency to the way they moved forward.

He thought about the books he had read, about how fast horses were supposed to be able to go.

They could be going faster. Hell, if it was just single riders, they would have surpassed the quest party days ago.

And yet, they moved slowly, leisurely. They woke up late in the mornings. They took their breakfasts like they had all the time in the world. Like the giant they were supposed to defeat was waiting around, filing its nails.

Because, David realized, they all knew, in the backs of their heads. They all knew something horrible waited for them. 

The beings around David were chosen because they were brave, intelligent, loyal, capable. They were the truest defenders that their peoples had. And yet, there was something in all of them. Call it cowardice, selfishness, humanity. Regardless, it made them take their time as they delved into the unknown.

 

“I struggle to believe,” David said, “that you had no idea how to cook an egg.”

Katherine shoved him, so light he barely felt it. “My father had a trained staff for cooking eggs alone, it was deemed a waste of my time.”

“An entire staff?” someone David didn’t know asked. David looked them over quickly-- blue, waxy skin stretched over their bones, every joint on eerie display, and odd spots glistened on their limbs, almost like Crutchie’s scales.

“An entire staff.” Jojo’s confirmation came through a mouthful of egg, and Katherine and Rafaela both visibly winced. She rolled her eyes and swallowed. “Imagine, for a moment, the king ordering about his egg servants. ‘Egg Man the First, I would like you scrambling the yolks of my finest quail’s unborn offspring!’ Quite a picture, no?”

Katherine laughed, and it was almost shockingly genuine. “It is most kind of you to think my father reserves time in his day to speak directly to his staff.”

“Too much time spent preening his feathers,” Rafaela said quietly. “Stroking his own ego.”

It was the most David had ever heard her say, and if anyone else had said it, it would have been a joke. But out of her mouth, it was something different. He didn’t want to put a word to it, but it was… unexpected. 

“Is speaking ill of him not treason?” Crutchie asked, and he was met with confused glances.

“It seems unlike you to worry yourself with such things,” Katherine said after a moment of silent debate towards who had the most tact.

Crutchie snorted. “Princess, count me as a supporter of treason. I was just making sure to mark us all as of the same mindset.”

“To treason!” Jojo said, raising her cup, and everyone else in the circle followed suit.

 

The entire time Katherine had known Jojo, there had never been a shortage of words. If they weren’t talking, it was just because they didn’t want to, not because they couldn’t. Even in that transitional period between realizing what she wanted and not having it yet, Katherine had always been able to talk to her like she was born to.

So as they sat there together, she could hear many things. The clop of hooves, the sound of wheels rolling across the rocky path, the sound of jostling supplies and conversation. But since they weren’t talking, it felt worse than silence.

David had understood the way she looked at him when she asked if she could have some space that day, and had joined the mer-- Crutchie?-- and Buttons in their covered wagon. 

And so, Jojo was sitting there, across from her in her carriage. A luxury compared to the rest of those on the quest’s spaces, but a luxury Katherine did not deserve. A luxury she had never felt at home in.

She would have given so much to feel at home in her luxuries, but she would have given  _ anything _ to sit in one of the covered wagons with David and all the others.

But this was the hand she was dealt-- sitting on cushions that felt too soft, in clothes that felt too warm, staring at the girl she had loved, wishing they were anywhere else.

Throughout the silence, she allowed herself to daydream about worlds where they were switched, where she would get to see Jojo decked out in jewels and decadent fabrics. Worlds where they lived like David said his family lived, away from the rest of the Everyone until they were just the Them.

Try as she might, she couldn’t picture a wedding, or a happy death. She wasn’t quite sure why.

Finally,  _ finally,  _ Jojo spoke up. “Why am I here?”

Katherine felt her jaw tighten. “Why would you not be?”

Jojo seemed to crack open, just the tiniest bit, and Katherine could see the way she betrayed herself by letting anything show. “Moon, you left saying you would tell your father how you loved me.” She placed her hands next to her, gripping at the seams of the cushions. “And now we are here. And you have hardly spoken to me since then.”

“I…”

“I do not wish for your excuses, Princess. I would wish for a reason, if I believed it would fix this miserable mess.”

“But what if it could, Stars? What if I could tell you a reason and it would change all this?”

“Then share it, now.”

Katherine was silent.

“You are unable to,” Jojo said. “Because there is nothing that could. Princess, understand, it is quite possible that I die before we reach home. I am a pawn sent by the king to protect. And above that, Princess, I know in my heart that I love you. And if there were an arrow aimed at your heart, I would take it. If one of us makes it home, it will be you.”

“I will not allow it.”

“It is not your choice. I will do my duty to the throne and to my heart.”

But Jojo was so, so good. She was so sweet, and so funny, and so much better than Katherine that a world where Katherine survived but she did not sounded like a direct rebellion against the stars.

But then again, it was not as if Katherine would live to see that world.

“We could run,” Katherine offered.

“No.”

Jojo was brave. Jojo was foolish. She was ignorant. She did not know what Katherine knew.

If she knew what Katherine knew, she still would have journeyed forward.

“Then at least allow me,” Katherine said, feeling the words to scrape at her throat, “to love you, and to kiss you, for as long as I can.”

When she tried to look Jojo in the eye, she was startled by the way she received a steady stare back. 

“Princess,” Jojo tried, but her voice faded towards the end.

Silence.

Then, “Katherine. You must understand, you must, that it will be harder to die if I have something to live for.”

 

Soon after, something shifted, so subtly that David didn’t even realize it.

While they were moving forward, they ran across a pack of some creatures that David didn’t recognize but Crutchie identified in a low voice to Medda, who nodded grimly.

They all spoke in low tones to each other.

“We can always create a new path,” Medda said, rubbing underneath her eyes, and David raised a hesitant hand. She blinked and nodded at him.

“Is there a reason we are speaking in such low tones?”

“They have very acute senses of hearing,” Crutchie said, his lips pursed. “Their species has relied on it for so long that all other senses have become useless to them. They hunt using sound alone, and if we speak much louder they will be able to target us in an instant.”

“So they have no way of distinguishing our position other than sound?”

Crutchie sighed. “Yes, that is what I stated, thank you.”

“No, no, hear my words.” David beckoned the two of them closer. “What if we moved around?”

Medda pursed her lips, and he hurried to say, “I know it sounds quite similar to your plan, but consider, we swarm around. All the carriages and wagons and horses go around in separate ways, much like a bubble? Yes, a bubble of sorts.”

Crutchie clicked his tongue as he stroked the back of one of his serpents’ heads. “Overwhelm them with sound,” he said, piecing each word together like a puzzle, “so that no singular unit can be detected. Medda, is there any chance of that working?”

“If we ride close enough. The sound must disorient them so that they cannot collect themselves and organize to attack in an ordered fashion, so we cannot keep any form of safe distance.”

Crutchie nodded and waved for everyone who was milling around to gather together.

“What do we face?” asked one man, a satyr that David had hardly spoken to. His voice wavered slightly, and David felt his fear like a thundering landslide over the mountain of his own terror. 

“There is a plan,” Crutchie said, his voice firm enough that David relaxed until he realized that he was being stared at.

Then, in turn, came the realization that he was expected to share the plan that he had concocted, and he was reminded why he didn’t love creating plans.

“I… Crutchie mentioned that the creatures’ primary sense is hearing. He and Medda have agreed with the thought that we may be able to disorient them enough to make it past unscathed if we all ride in separate directions around them.”

Crutchie slapped him on the shoulder, and Davey felt one of the serpents snake along his arm for a moment before it returned to Crutchie. 

“You heard his words, follow them.”

David sat, jaw set tightly, next to Katherine, in her carriage, as they moved forwards, inching towards the execution of his idea.

“What if this fails?” he said, his voice raspy in its quietness.

“It will not,” she said, firm and convicted.

“Do not lie.”

She sighed. “Allow me to care for your heart, please. You have built up a debt I do not know how to repay, so I must try. Let me do the right thing.”

They listened as the groups split up, sped up to further muddle the sound of hooves and wheels.

“Alright,” he said, and she took his hand in one of hers, rubbing his arm with her other hand.

“Worry not. Worry not, we do not end here.” 

It wasn't until they were far past the creatures that David realized something: his plan had been heard. Not just heard, but listened to. 

“I lead?” He hated how it came out sounding like a question, but Katherine just hummed.

“Yes, you did. You did splendidly, David.”

 

Oddly enough, things like that kept happening for the next few days, about simple things; David, where should we store this? and David, do you have any thoughts about the guard rotations? and David, are these poisonous?

The last question had came from Katherine. They had been poisonous.

But it was a bizarre thing, to be asked questions so often. He wondered if he was simply just available, the first choice because he was first seen. 

Throughout his life, he had been chosen for three reasons: so he could be protected, so he could be attacked, or because he was convenient. He couldn’t fathom another option.

“David!” He turned, and Crutchie raised one arm, his left serpent flicking a forked tongue at David. “Come, help me with deciding plans for rations.”

Like he said before. It was peculiar.

 

Katherine was having one of her days. David had begun to recognize them-- the days where she was more Princess than Katherine, where she had to cling to a sense of self to avoid apathy. Most of the time, she staved it off by having him tell her stories.

“Tell me about your Jack,” she said, her head in his lap. He released a heavy sigh as he ran his fingers through her hair. It was out of its braid for once, laying across his legs and the cushions like the branches of some odd dark tree.

“Well,” he said, “he is not particularly skilled with his words. Crafting them, that is. He has a beautiful voice, though. When we are safe, alone, it is very soft. Gentle. When on the off chance I see him outside of private walls, it is rougher. It reflects him, I suppose. Whoever said that the eyes are the mirror to one’s soul clearly did not listen enough.”

“Can he sing?”

“Not very well. He is only alive. It is… rather like a bullfrog. But it is well-meaning, so I love it regardless. Poetry, however, he reads very well.”

“Ancients’ poetry?”

He felt the corners of his eyes crinkle with a smile. “Oh, yes. He finds books in the marketplace, and gives me some. The rest, he keeps to read to me. Does Jojo read to you?”

“She used to,” Katherine said, her voice tinged with something David didn’t understand, so he let it be. It felt odd to continue after her words, so he fell silent, and eventually, she spoke again.

“It is strange to speak about her the way I have always dreamed. I had accustomed myself to the idea that I would never be able to. There was no one that I was sure was safe to lend my heart to, besides her.”

Her eyebrows furrowed as she kept talking, and he used his thumb to smooth the creases.

“And yet I trust you, somehow. Somehow. Death, I think, made my heart desperate to share itself.” She blinked, and when her eyes open, they were filled with the confusion of an intruding thought. “Or perhaps the people are kinder the further away from him I venture.”

He hummed an old song he remembered from when he was a baby, and she closed her eyes. He almost thought that she drifted off before she spoke again.

“I could have helped you.”

“Pardon?”

“I have so much luxury. And you had none. You were alive, the entire time, and I never knew it. I never realized.”

“Oh, Katherine. You can not possibly think about your cage and wish mine had the same accessories. They were both cages, only yours had more glamour and mine had other birds for company. And we both escaped, but not the way we would have wanted.”

“But I could have helped, David. There are so many I could have helped.”

“You have made it clear what kind of man the king is. You survived, that is sometimes the best we are able to do.” She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, and he felt his throat close up, wishing he could take her hurt on his shoulders.

“I could have tried,” she protested, and he shushed.

“Do not feel guilty for self-preservation. You gave me my pants, you gave me a beautiful final home. You gave me an ear that would listen and a shoulder I could lean on, and I am more grateful for nothing else.”

She sighed, her face still tense and scrunched in some places, but he could feel her shoulders relaxing. “Thank you.”

They sat together, listening to the world around them, content in their silence.

“Although,” she said, “I did not offer you new pants out of guilt. Yours were just truly ugly.”

 

Of all the rations that had been brought on the trip, best hidden to avoid early consumption had been the bottles of Dryadic wine Medda had brought along with her.

One night when their spirits were especially low, she brought out the bottles, and the group spent hours around the fire, drinking and telling stories much louder than they needed to.

Jojo, desperately drunk, hung off of Buttons’s shoulder all night, and David squeezed Katherine’s shoulder when he saw her hugging her arms around her own stomach.

Finch broke from the silence he had held for so long to teach them the words of a Winged bar song in his quiet, whispery voice.

There were several choruses interjected with more drinking and boisterous recounts of previous exploits. Crutchie sent his serpents to jump out of the bags of anyone who still looked a little tightly wound, and amidst the surprised shrieks were more laughter and demands for someone to pass the bottles.

David felt his head swimming and stared towards the fire until the backs of his eyes burned and he felt his temples being clawed at by invisible talons. Finally, he looked up, and saw Rafaela looking at him curiously, blinking at him more like an owl that a hummingbird.

He looked away when he heard Crutchie boo loudly. Crutchie looked to him as soon as his head shifted.

“David, join my fight! Medda says she won’t bring out any more!”

“Do you even need it?”

Crutchie flung himself dramatically into the nearest lap. “Betrayed, by a rude drunk!”

Medda watched him, a wry smile gracing her lips. “Would you just sleep? All the sensible ones have retired to bed already.”

“Only if I may be accompanied! Finch, are you in the corresponding mood?”

Finch stared, looking both shocked and perplexed, with a dash of horrified, by the proposal. Crutchie sighed.

“And then betrayed by a prude. I retire begrudgingly.”

“You do that,” Medda said, clearly sparing very little pity.

With one last, scornful sound, Crutchie snapped his fingers for his serpents to wrap around his arms, and they hoisted him up to walk off towards his tent.

There were a blissful few moments of calm before--

“David! Medda!  _ Quick! _ ”

With quick glances around the circle to make sure everyone had heard, the two ran towards Crutchie’s voice.

They found him, pale and shaking, only a few feet from his tent, with the body of the quiet satyr from before lying near his feet.

David hadn’t known him. He’d only heard a few words ever come out of his mouth, and even those had faded into the crowd.

But it still made him sick to his stomach to see him lying there, neck bent at an impossible angle, orange letters carved against his chest:

_ Who next? _

Who next, indeed.

 

Katherine looked up as he entered the tent, and she looked almost as shaken as he felt.

“He…”

“Dead,” David confirmed, and he felt himself quake until he fell onto the blankets next to Katherine.

She sighed heavily and wrapped him up in her arms, rocking back and forth.

“David?”

That wasn’t her voice, it was Jack’s.

“Davey,  _ are you there?” _

David shut his eyes tight and pressed his forehead against Katherine’s shoulder.

“Davey!”

He screwed up his face to keep his eyes closed as tightly as possible, to keep himself from running towards the voice. 

He fell asleep hearing the voice he loved most screaming his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahahahahahhaa... death!  
> aaannnyyyyyways, i would really appreciate if you would drop me a comment! i might be slow at responding but i read and treasure all of them i promise! i'll try to get a new chapter out sooner than this one but i promise nothing  
> (the tradition states i have to make a Funnie Joke so if you give me a comment i'll owe you a tear-stained first draft of my lit analysis essay fgshdgshgds)  
> thank you for reading!!!! i hope all of you are having a wonderful morning/afternoon/evening/middle-of-night-and-your-eyes-are-starting-to-cross-at-the-screen, depending on your timezone <3


	6. the rocks and stones echoing my song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Sarah move forward, still on the ticking clock that they can't see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA IT'S BEEN THREE AND A HALF MONTHS WHOOPS  
> i PROMISE i am not dead. school happened and then finals happened and then a certification test happened and lots of stuff happened. regardless it is here now and i am on summer break so i will try to get another chapter out in less than a month dhsjhdjshd  
> uhh this chapter title is from "wait for me"!!! which was performed at the tonys!!!!!! yall should watch it!!!!! hadestown won 8 awards thanks to anaïs mitchell for my gay rights and these pretty song lyrics to use as titles  
> uhhhh these kids also heard screams last time they were with them. i'm sorry it's always a generic cliffhanger with me. this one doesn't have one, i promise.

He wasn’t used to feeling useless.

But when they woke up to screams, Sarah had started barking at him to sit somewhere, draw something in the dirt, grab this or that from her bag, and he did all of it instantly, not knowing what any of it meant. All he knew was that magic was going on, and that eventually, the screams faded, and Sarah focused on something else.

Jack had never been sure how magic worked.

In the world he had begun his life alone in, everything was very real, and solid. Hunger wasn’t abstract. Cold wasn’t abstract-- he could feel each of them eating away at him. He could see the signs of them. Then had begun the part of his life that was, for the most part, all about David. Love was abstract. Beauty was abstract. And yet they existed within Jack’s life.

And now, magic. It was real-- he could see it in front of him, he could smell the fires that Sarah conjured, he could feel the crackling, glowing creatures she created to keep watch. And yet he couldn’t understand it. He understood it even less than the things that he couldn’t touch or see.

But it was still happening-- just like love, and just like hunger. He watched as Sarah murmured frantically, making sharp, jerky motions with her fingers.

Underneath her fingers, an image of David was forming. It was almost like a bust, just the tops of his shoulders and up. Jack looked at it carefully-- it was missing David’s moles and freckles, and there should have been a scar along his neck, below his Adam’s apple. But nonetheless, it was David. When it was finished, Sarah traced her fingers over it and closed her eyes. Jack waited quietly, afraid to interrupt and ruin anything.

Then, Sarah quaked with a shiver that seemed to run through her entire body. She stumbled backwards, and the bust crumbled, eaten up by glowing blue flames. Jack watched, unable to speak, as fire that couldn’t burn consumed David’s eyes.

“What…” His voice was raspy, hardly more than a whisper, and he coughed. “Sarah, what was that?”

She kept staring at where the bust has floated, so he walked up next to her and hovered his hand over her shoulder. “Sarah?”

“He is too far,” she said, her voice remarkably strong, but stripped down, like all the layers of calm had been peeled away to reveal one desperate, powerful core. “He has journeyed too far for my magic to reach him anymore. And without tracks…”

“He is gone,” Jack finished, wishing his voice mirrored her strength. “We…”

“Have not failed yet,” Sarah said firmly. “We must simply ride faster. No breaks. It is the only way to bring him home.”

In their moment of silence, Jack realized that they had no plan for if they failed. Would Sarah just go back home to her family? Would Jack go back? How could they, when the only thing that made their lives at Marlin’s End worth living would be gone?

They couldn’t fail. They had only accounted for success.

“I just want all of you to be together.”

Sarah gave him a sharp long that made him feel slightly chastised. “You must be there as well. I would not like to face my brother if I do not bring you home.”

 

And so, they rode forward. For two days, they kept moving, never stopping except for a few minutes so their horses could drink water and so that Sarah could check, desperately hoping that David would be in reach of her radar.

Jack started having dreams when he was awake. They weren’t daydreams, they happened no matter what time it was. The path started swaying in front of him, his eyes burned all the time, so he recited mantras.  _ It will be worth it. When I see him again, pain will fade. This pain is nothing against losing him.  _ He created hymns out of his thoughts, tapped out rhythms in a nearly delirious state. He wrote letter after letter in his head, imagined scratching out the words, imagined David reading them and kissing him. He’d kiss him, not like fire, but like sunlight, scaring everything awful away until the world was just  _ David. _

He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t.

 

They were at an odd part in the forest, where the trees above them were so thick that it felt like everything was night. Sarah cast a spell that she barely knew but could still manage, so a hesitant ball of light hovered in front of her.

Everything was fine. Everything was _ fine. _ Sarah could barely swallow, her throat was so dry, and her eyes burned, and she felt like she was going to collapse to the ground in seconds. But everything was fine. It had to be.

And then, Jack screamed.

Sarah whipped her head to the side, feeling things move in slow motion.

Jack’s horse was falling forward, and its leg was… gone. No blood. Just… vanished. The other one started disappearing, and Sarah felt herself scream, felt a glowing blue claw snatch Jack out of the air. Sarah’s horse halted as Sarah frantically yanked at the reins.

Sarah tumbled off her horse, the claw dropping Jack onto the ground and retreating back into her chest. Jack looked up, wiping blood away from his eyebrow, and screamed. He scrambled away from his vanishing horse. Sarah, however watched closely. There was something curious about it, as if it was being erased piece by piece.

When the entire thing was gone, there was no indent in the dirt where it had fallen.

Just words, like they had been traced out with one shaky finger:  _ Turn around. _

“Jack,” Sarah said, and he turned around. He blinked at the words, staring like his eyes weren’t quite connected with his brain. She started towards him, holding out a hand, and he looked at her for a half second before his eyes closed and he fell to the ground.

 

Everything in Jack’s body hurt. His back, his feet, his eyes. There was some kind of monster clawing at his stomach, and he wanted to reach through his temples and yank out his brain, just so it would stop screaming at him.

Then he opened his eyes, and all the pain came to a stop.

David smiled softly, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he laughed. “Morning, lovely.”

Jack blinked and looked past David. That was his bookshelf against the wall, the same faded and worn-thin layer of paint. They were nestled underneath Jack’s blanket. Jack was home. He was home? He reached out and traced his thumb over David’s cheekbone. Real. He felt so real that the hurt started coming back all over again, biting at Jack’s throat.

“But--” Jack started, cut off by a quick kiss.

“You are home now. We are home, darling.”

Jack wanted to believe him. He wanted to play along. They said he couldn’t feel things in dreams, so why could he? It had to be a dream, there was no way he could be safe and warm again.

He looked at the sliver of sunlight against the wall behind David, shining through the opposite window. “It’s morning.” David raised one eyebrow.

“Yes, it is. How brilliant of you!”

Jack sighed. “I mean that you should be home.”

David sighed. “I do not want to leave you. I already have, for far too long.”

“You must. It’s not safe to leave during the afternoon, you know that--”

“Then I will not leave,” David decided, looking at Jack with a kind of desperate, pleading look in his eyes. It wasn’t fire, or determination, just a prayer to be loved in return. “I will stay here. You can stay here,  _ we  _ can stay here.”

Jack touched his fingers, lightly, to the mole on David’s collarbone, trailing his hand down to where David had three little circular scars on his chest. “I don’t have food, or water here. How are we supposed to live like that?”

David laughed, bright and happy. The desperation faded out of his eyes into something bubbly and joyful, and all of a sudden the pit in Jack’s stomach was gone.

“We will live off kisses,” he declared, and Jack felt laughter burst out of him. It was at that moment he realized that he was content in whatever dream he had found himself in. He had missed David’s smile so badly that even though he knew his heart would inevitably break when he woke up, he was willing to close his eyes if it meant being able to see him again.

David leaned forward, still laughing, and Jack held his hand-- seemingly warm, supposedly alive-- tight.

Sarah watched as Jack’s eyebrows slowly unfurrowed, a soft smile spreading across his face. She sighed and took her fingers off his temple, hoping that the magic would stay.

She’d grown used to taking away bad dreams-- her family lived in a hellscape, after all, and there was only so much they could do to convince Les that it wasn’t real. She hadn’t had to think much to figure out what kind of dream Jack needed-- as far as she knew, David was the only person who had loved him back.

David had mentioned two mothers, one abandoning him and then the other finding him and leaving him again. Never parents in pairs, just one after the other, making him feel loved and then taking it away.

David was Sarah’s sanity. He was the thing holding her to her family, keeping her life from falling apart. She needed him for things to continue the way they were.

She pushed Jack’s hair away from his eyes, wincing at the tiny cuts on his forehead from the rocks and dirt she had dropped him on.

She needed David for life to be the same. Jack… 

Sarah sighed, placed her fingers back on Jack’s temples, and went to work again. The least she could give him was a happy dream.

 

They ate what little breakfast they had slowly, like if they ate their preserved meats and fruits in little bites, it would somehow fill them up more. Like they were children, trying to make a treat last for as long as possible.

Sarah’s horse refused to stand up again, so they shouldered their packs and started walking the same way they had been riding before.

Neither of them spoke, each afraid that a single word out of the other’s mouth would break them to the ground, gut them like fish and force their secrets onto the floor. So they walked forward in silence, avoiding whatever they could.

_ How do we even know where we are going? If we couldn’t catch him on horse, how will we on foot? Where even are we any more? _

Somewhere along the line, Sarah’s internal soliloquy stopped speaking in her voice, started calling her  _ you. _ At that point, she cast a boundary spell to hold back any other magic, and then they kept moving forward.

Jack hated thinking about the idea that he was “going soft.”

He didn’t have any of the boys from so long ago to make fun of him and poke at him, still using Ancients slang since they had learned to talk to people by reading Ancients texts. They would have told him that, mocked him for the way he stopped running and lifting and getting stronger by necessity. He  _ liked  _ that he was happier and safer, and that he didn’t need to run and hide.

But in that moment, as he and Sarah hiked through the forest until they couldn’t feel any of their limbs? He had definitely gone soft.

He remembered running through cobblestone streets without shoes on, living on ice cold streets. But a damn forest had outdone him, making his legs burn and his feet feel like they’d be better off dead. He couldn’t imagine being Sarah, having barely left her home for years, and then going immediately into constant pursuit of something so much faster than her.

Hiking became walking and walking became trudging and everything was so  _ slow  _ and  _ tired  _ that Jack didn’t know if they were even moving. It was like preparation for dying, like if Jack forgot how to feel his limbs, he wouldn’t miss them as much if they vanished. He’d been ready for that since the moment they set out in the first place, he just hadn’t been prepared for fading away to take so damn long.

 

Sarah shouldn’t have wasted her magic. She was already tired enough. But still, she summoned her rabbit to her side, watching it with burning eyes as it followed at her feet and danced between her legs. It shined a little less brightly than it had at the beginning of the trip, but it moved just as swiftly, much faster than she was able to fully adjust to.

She turned her head to see Jack behind her, pulling at the straps of his bag and rubbing his shoulders. He was probably even more tired than her, without the vat of her magic to draw energy from, and she slowed down, stumbling for a moment over her rabbit. She regained her footing and fell in step with Jack, who gave her a pained smile. She couldn’t tell if it was grateful or not, so she looked forward again, and recited poetry to the tempo of her heartbeat.

There had never been in a map in Sarah’s house. She only knew vague directions-- the Capitol was that way, the Giant was that way, and so forth. She didn’t know about mountain ranges, or lakes, or…

Valleys.

Jack sighed from next to her. “Stars.” He turned his head. “Is there anywhere the walls may slope more gently?” 

They walked along the side until they found a place with a slightly less immediate drop, and Jack dropped his bag, sitting next to it.

“We are lost,” he said, his voice flat and tired.

Sarah felt her cheeks dimple as she pursed her lips. “You do not know that.”

“You don’t know where we are, though. That’s what being lost is, no?”

“I…”

Jack made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “We are nearly out of food. Our plan was to get him back, Sarah, we never knew  _ how.” _

She looked away, not willing to look at the faith dropping out of his eyes. She stared out at the valley, filled with thick canopies of trees and fields that could have been farmland if anyone lived there. And then, and then… farmland?

“People,” she whispered, and Jack sighed. “No, Jack, Jack--” she cut herself off and scrambled to another angle, feeling her throat close up and her eyes sting. “Come here. There’s a  _ town, there are people.” _

She saw Jack walk up to her side, apprehensive, but she didn’t compute it until his hand took hers, soft and worn down. He tugged her forward, and they moved on together.

When they finally emerged from the trees and saw the cluster of buildings, Sarah nearly sobbed. It was even smaller than Marlin’s End, and yet so different.

Marlin’s End was slapped-together mud and driftwood, rocky chimneys and scraggly crops. This town was carved directly out of fallen trees, long chains of homes on massive, ancient trees that had lost their needles years ago. There were no fires, there was no smoke. There were steady lanterns that glowed like Sarah’s creations. There were paintings on the ground. There was a crowd of people, and music playing. There was a see-through girl turning around and running towards them, her feet not touching the ground.

“Kindly, do you speak?”

There was Jack, talking. There was her vision, swimming with tears.

There was Sarah, falling to the ground.

 

She woke up wrapped in softer blankets than any she had ever known. Suddenly hot, she pushed her feet-- since when was she not wearing shoes?-- out of the cradle of clouds.

She heard snoring and turned her head barely to see Jack sitting on the only other bed in the room. He was facing her, his legs crossed, and he was leaning back against the wall with a book in his lap.

Sarah knew how bad news felt. She knew the settling of it in her bones before she even heard it. She knew the hum in the air, the electricity before the shock. 

It was just a little too hard to face, so she lay on her side, facing Jack, and fell asleep again.

 

The next time she woke up, Jack’s hand was on her shoulder, shaking her gently.

She blinked. “Hello?” Her vision started to adjust, and it took her a moment to remember.

When she’d fallen asleep, she had fallen asleep inside a tree, in a bed that wasn’t hers. Jack had been in the other bed. She was still inside a tree and in a bed much too warm to be hers, but Jack was next to her, something not entirely unpredictable.

She sat up and saw the person sitting across the room.

Her hair was piled on top of her head in tiny dark corkscrew shapes, pinned with flowers and scattered with pollen. She wore a fine blue skirt, leather boots, and an old-fashioned blouse like Sarah saw in history books about the Ancients. She was utterly gorgeous, and Sarah wanted to reach out and touch her, to make sure she was real.

That was the thing, the real part, the part of this woman that Sarah wondered about. She could be real, Sarah could see her. But she floated slightly above her chair, and Sarah could see the woven back of it behind her, just like with the little girl from before. She could just as easily be an apparition from above.

The woman stood up smoothly as Sarah scrambled to push off her covers and stand up before the woman reached out for her hand.

“Atlas,” she said, no more than a whisper in a deep, rusty type of voice. “Sarah, no?”

“Sarah,” she breathed as Atlas smiled barely. “You know Jack?”

“Indeed. I wished to ensure you woke safely. Jack, you will inform her of my news, I am sure?” Jack nodded mutely, and Atlas’s smile grew to something just slightly more. She left in an instant, and Sarah stared after her.

“She is their leader. Been dead thirteen ages.” Sarah turned her head to where Jack sat on the bed, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand.

“I see,” Sarah said carefully, sitting next to him. “She had news?”

“Yes,” Jack said, and his eyes were suddenly redder than Sarah had noticed before.

They sat, uncertain, and Sarah’s throat started to close. “Jack?”

“You saw the mountains,” he said, and she nodded slowly. Of course she had, the mountains on the far edge of the valley, taller than anything she’d ever seen.

“The Capitol is just past them.”

The electricity settled, and yet there was no shock.

And then out of nothing, there it was.

“The Capitol was East.” She paused, her mind far too muddled for anything, and swallowed hard. “And the Giant was West of Marlin’s End.”

Jack nodded, his eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes.”

They both knew what it meant. They both knew that somewhere along the line, they had made a mistake. Neither of them voiced it, though, out of consideration for the other’s heart. And so, for stars knew how long, they sat in silence.

Jack rubbed at the corners of his eyes. “David’s books about the Ancients talked about how they made sacrifices to the gods.”

Not sure how he was going to continue, Sarah just nodded.

“They would burn their sacrifices at altars once they had received what they asked the gods for. Sarah, I knelt at the altar and asked for his love and it was given to me. And I did not make a sacrifice in return.”

“This is not--”

“This is, Sarah. This is what they have taken from me, in return for what they gave.”

“Even the Ancients quit believing that things like this could be their fault.”

“The things they thought about were not  _ like this.  _ They stopped blaming themselves for earthquakes. Disasters. They stopped blaming themselves, and then created disasters, and didn’t blame themselves for those, and now our world is as it is. We  _ could  _ have stopped this. Just like they could have stopped the world from lighting like a Phoenix and burning into the hell we have now.”

“I know,” Sarah said.

Quite frankly, there wasn’t much else she could say. She had nothing thought out, nothing planned. They had never considered the alternative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "penzy, those screams basically meant nothing except creepy magic trying to scare them?????" yeah, y'all, magic is fucked up. it tries to scare them a lot  
> "penzy, what the FUCK?????? DAVEY'S G O N E?????? HOW ARE THERE STILL FOUR CHAPTERS LEFT??????????" trust me on this one. i've had this outlined since chapter one.  
> anyyyyyyways hoped you enjoyed the pretty constant sad and also sarah being gay for a ghost. atlas is pretty fucking cool i have a big backstory for her  
> next chapter.... y'all aren't ready. i can feel it in my bones. It's A Big One. i hope it'll make up for the 3+ months of waiting for a shorter than average chapter.  
> please comment, i'll owe you... cpr if you almost die?


	7. king of diamonds, king of spades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quest continues, with a higher price.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so this chapter is a fucking doozy. trigger warnings for suicide/self harm ideation/attempts, vomiting, and emotional abuse (father to daughter)  
> some pretty major shit goes down, though, so if you want to make sure to stay clear, message me on tumblr (@penzyroamin) for either a summary or a description of what scenes to skip! stay safe please!  
> anyways have fun im tired (title from epic ii)

When Buttons started getting uneasy, David knew something was changing.

“We are nearing the edge of the land that my people know,” she confessed to him one night, when they were keeping guard together. “I know you have not seen them, but Dryads have been here. I know this land, in my soul. But not too far beyond here…” She trailed off, and David held out a hand for her to take. She smiled softly and ran her thumb along the lines of his palm.

“It goes dark,” she said, soft enough that David could barely hear her. “My purpose will be gone.”

“Why must you have a purpose?”

“Why else would I be sent? We all have a purpose. Otherwise, we would not be here.”

Her eyes darkened when she evidently realized that her statement didn’t apply to David. He just shook his head, focusing on her softly glowing freckles, like gems hidden in a cave.

“Do not feel guilty.”

She laughed, surprisingly bitter for someone as sweet as fruit. “I feel every lost love, David. Every broken dream. I will always feel guilty that I could not take that pain as my own.”

“And I will always feel guilty that I cannot take yours.”

They looked at each other for a moment, a brief second of starlight shining through crystal and refracting into the world around them. Buttons looked away first, and turned her head to the moon.

“You should have been a Dryad. You have the heart for it, the spine.”

He’d been told before that he had a heart, but never a spine.

“What is it like? Knowing that if your tree is hurt…”

She pulled at one of her curls. “It is constant terror, I will admit to you. I do not believe it will ever ease. Dryads usually live a very long time, of course, but there is always the fear. When one of us dies, it pains us all. The last time was right after I came to be, of course. But it was still felt. The first few of your years I could experience life, every Dryad in the world was mourning.”

“So all of you…”

“We all go through the grieving process. You must understand, it is not like with your people, where one is just another creature unless you have known them. Because we feel with others, when one of us dies,” she pointed her finger right at where a heart would be, “it is a blow to the chest.”

“Your people must fear for you.”

“It is why they guard my tree so closely. It is why I fear being beyond their reach.” She sighed. “I do not regret sprouting as I am, I swear.”

“I never thought it,” he assured her, and she smiled at him, squeezing his hand.

“As I said. A good heart.”

 

Katherine had tried her best to prevent ever being alone throughout the journey.

Her father had ordered that she have a private space at all times. As soon as he had left, she demanded she be placed with someone. She needed to be held away from things, both things she knew well and things she did not.

When she first heard the whispers, she was glad that she had chosen to be with others. At that point, she had been sharing with Buttons, and when she was forced into a sweat, clutching at her temples, Buttons had been there to prevent her from running into the night.

She had always been surrounded by other people. Guards, nurses, nannies. People there to force her mouth open and pry out herbs that were already halfway down her throat. People to watch her, even when she bathed, pulling her out if her mouth even so much as slipped under water. 

She was sure David knew. She saw the way he looked, all careful and cautious, when she insisted she would be fine alone. But still, eventually she wound up on her own at night. She could only beg for the same watch as David so many times.

(He was the first person she ever really wanted near her.)

So she sat in their tent, alone, watching her candle flicker.

(Not because she needed him. She’s needed the butlers and nannies and Knights. She’d needed Buttons. She  _ wanted  _ him to be there.)

She stared at the candle, swiping her finger through the flame like Medda taught her. It was enchanting, touching fire but still being unable to burn.

They never kept open candles in their tent when David was there. Only lanterns. Covered flames. She knew him too well to do that.

_ Katherine. _

She looked closer, at the little dot of blue at the center.

_ Just do it. He is not present. I kept you safe for as long as I was supposed to. _

The dot vanished, then came back without a second to spare.

_ You are alone now. I let you be alone. Did you not want this chance? _

“Leave me,” she said, barely above a murmur, but still louder than the whisper. “I do not want you here.”

_ Of course not. What princess wants her father near her when she could have someone below her? _

“He is not  _ below me,”  _ she spat, and she heard a faint cackle.

_ The boy’s dreams smell of smoke. He does not tell you the truth, you know. _

“He does not need to.”

_ No one does. No one tells you the truth. The kingdom’s little bitch. Silent little monster. Parasite leaching the worthiness out of the crown. Too busy fucking knights and pitying peasants to smile and wave at the people who need a statue. _

She glared at the candle, and it glared right back, and when she closed her eyes she could still see it, a glowing orange spot against her eyelids.

_ What will it be? Light fire to your dress? The poison in your pocket? Pick, Katherine, or we pick for you. _

She clutched at her face, her fingers pressing in between her eyes and the bone of their sockets. “Leave me alone,” she said, her voice breaking painfully. “Leave me alone, I do not want you.”

_ But you have me, daughter. _

David found her sleeping, nails still making bloody crescents in her arms. He blew out the candle and wrapped himself around her, took her stained hands in his, and hummed himself to sleep.

 

David had never comprehended a land without a single trace of color.

Marlin’s End had been dark brown, dusty yellow, sickly green. It had been the bitterly inky blue of the ocean. It was miserable, but there was color.

David looked out on the Giant’s Wastelands, and he simply saw… nothing. Gray rock, the occasional brown dust. Not a tree, shrub, flower, bird, single hint of life at all in sight.

The skies were cloudless, but still gray. It was like someone had sucked all the light right out of the world.

They must have made for an interesting picture, the group of them with their bright wagons and richly colored clothes and neighing horses. Sitting right on the edge between a lush forest and the most utterly desolate place David had ever seen.

There were no cracks in the ground, but it felt like the world was ripping in two.

In a moment of silent agreement, they set up camp in the last little bit of forest, savoring the feeling of grass beneath their feet. People drank, or ate, or sang. Some just stayed inside their tents. David and Katherine sat on a fallen tree where they could look out at the Wasteland together.

“It is…” Katherine picked at a mark on her arm. “It is horrendous.”

David gave her a half-smile. “Truly hideous.”

She sniffed, faking haughtiness. “The decorators at the palace could do much better. See there, that boulder there could benefit from velvet drapes.”

David laughed, and her performance dripped away. She leaned into his shoulder, and he accepted her gladly, with an arm around her waist.

 

The satyr, they found clearly maimed. Any supplies that had been stolen from them, any messages carved into stone, were deliberate, all obvious.

But the way she lay in midair, one foot barely brushing the ground as the rest of her body hovered straight? It looked like Jojo had simply fallen onto a bed they could not see.

Medda had told David to stall Katherine, and he hadn’t known why. When he finally failed and she saw the stars brought to Earth, and when a scream ripped out of her throat like a claw had dragged it out, he understood.

Everyone let David sit with her, whispering to her as she screeched and shook on the ground, eventually touching her hair and shoulders when she nodded. The few medics they had bustled around Jojo, whispering to each other, trying to not disturb Katherine.

They sat on the ground together, Katherine leaning into David’s chest and she sobbed, occasionally yelling things that weren’t quite words into his shirt. At some point, Rafaela crouched down next to them, getting a small nod from David. She placed her hands on Katherine’s shoulder and slowly wrapped her wings around the two of them, sheltering them in every prism’s colors.

Finch joined them only a few minutes later, deep browns and golds opposite a rainbow of jewel tones.

And in the middle, David and Katherine, clutching each other for all they were worth.

 

“She has a pulse,” Medda said to Katherine, quietly so as to not disturb the rest of the sleeping party. “But she is frozen, no matter what we have done. She does not respond.”

Katherine stared at her hands, refusing to look up. “What can we do?”

Medda sighed, ran a hand down her face. “We could leave her, but that is--”

_ “No,”  _ Katherine said, her voice icy cold, and Medda nodded.

“As I was saying, that is cruel. We could wait, but we have no idea how long she will be this way.”

Katherine waited for a third option. There had to be one, there had to be.

Eventually, Medda said, “Rafaela and Finch have offered their services.”

She finally looked up from her hands. “What services?”

“They have said that they can try to fly her to safety. Where they may find an answer. But if they take her…”

David, previously silent, spoke up. “No one that will be seriously hurt could be flown away. No one bleeding to death could be taken to receive help. No one…”

“Yes,” Medda said, and Katherine stared past Medda’s head.

“Do it.”

Medda tried to catch her eyes. “Are you sure?”

She felt David’s hand on the small of her back, quiet and reassuring. “I am,” she said after a moment. “Tell them to fly as soon as they are able. All the way to my father’s palace, if possible.”

Medda waited for a moment, then nodded and walked away. David sighed heavily and tugged lightly on Katherine’s sleeve.

“You should sleep,” he said, and she looked at him for a moment before he held his hands up in defense.

“It was only a suggestion. You deserve peace of mind.” He took her shoulders and turned them towards him so he could tuck her into a gentle hug. “She will be alright. I know it.”

“You do?”

He pulled back, his eyes soft and sparkling. “Of course I do. She is far away from danger now, Katherine. They all are. They will be alright.”

She ignored the unspoken message in his words, the knowledge that they wouldn’t be.

They found their way to their tent, and as David bustled around, folding clothes and picking at spots, Katherine wondered if she should have been watching over him like he watched her.

She pulled her blankets over her, and saw him staring into the melting wax of the only lit lantern.

“David?”

He flinched and turned back to her, smiling. “Sorry. My mind was not my own for a moment.”

She tried to smile back, and she waited until she knew he was asleep to close her eyes.

 

The next day, they journeyed further. David had expected some further sense of melancholy. He didn’t know what he had wanted, for them to all stand in a circle and say goodbye together? For them to finally acknowledge that things were going to go wrong?

It was all terribly wrong. It was wrong to lie, and wrong to admit the truth.

He didn’t want to die. Really, he didn’t.

He’d nearly drowned himself too many times. He didn’t want to die.

He’d smiled for his mother too many times. He didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to die. He never had. He’d just wanted things to be different. He’d wanted it so badly that he would have accepted nothing over the same thing.

But he  _ wanted  _ something. Stars, he wanted to  _ live. _

“What do you think will happen?” Katherine asked as they sat in her carriage. She had been playing with some fancy antique board game, and David shivered at the frank way she looked him in the eye.

“In… general?”

“When we die,” Katherine said, sweeping her arms to her side, a game piece still clasped in her hand. “When we are all gone.”

“Katherine,” David tried, and her gaze turned stony, completely sure.

“What will happen, David?”

David pursed his lips and sighed. “Marlin’s End might give up antagonizing my family. I sincerely hope they will. The Kingdom will mourn you, have the parade, of course. The King will probably have to send gifts of condolence to the chosen communities. Crutchie’s people will likely come under fire from the Mers for his death.”

Katherine tipped her head up, towards the roof. “Will they punish Jojo?”

“I do not know,” he said, quietly. She rolled her head back down, and looked to the window.

“Continue. I wish to become familiar with reality.”

David took a moment to think. “There may be a celebration. Perhaps a mass funeral. The Dryads will have to mourn, of course. Seven months, one for each decade of her life.”

Katherine frowned. “That long?”

“The longer a Dryad has lived, the longer they mourn. The longest period so far has been forty-two years.”

David looked back at Katherine, and she had her lips pressed tightly together. “What does the mourning consist of?”

He blinked. “Why?”

“What does it consist of?” she asked again, persistence written in her voice.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Every Dryad, on the face of our whole Earth, stays within their tree. No celebrations, conversations, anything. They just watch the time pass.”

“Are they allowed to leave?”

David felt a slow, uneasy feeling build in the pit of his stomach. “I do not believe so? To split with your tree during mourning means that your tree would perish, and when your tree is gone…”

They all knew the story. A Dryad, in the center of what would become the City’s Capitol. Her melting into the stones, scrabbling at her chest like a nonexistent heart was being carved out. Becoming a small sapling that would grow, but never have a Dryad linked to it.

The tree still grew in the center of the square. No one, except the Dryads, he supposed, knew if the legend was actually true.

He turned his head so he could see Katherine, and he felt his blood chill when he saw the blank expression on her face.

“Katherine? Are you in your own mind?”

She exhaled slowly, her eyes glassy but not coated with tears. “This is his plan,” she murmured. “This was it. All along.”

He heard his heart pounding in his ears, a racing drum. “What?”

“This was my father’s plan. Throw the world into mourning. Finally take the ancient Dryad land when they are unable to fight back. Take advantage of split alliances, frayed trust.”

David’s throat closed slowly, and he saw Katherine’s fingernails piercing the skin of her knees.

“He wants the world,” she said. “That is why we are all going to die. He wants us too, so that while the world grieves, he can conquer.”

“And he will be king,” David finished, feeling hollow. “Of…  _ everything.” _

Everything. He tried to picture it. Flags flying over the Land of Waste’s redwoods. The oceans patrolled by the Kingdom’s ships, without interference. Hospitals burning. Histories forgotten.

Every life like Katherine’s. Controlled, blank.

Art, gone. Languages forced out until they withered and died. Books rewritten, banned, burned. Every paper in the world, every scrap of news, straight from his mouth.

David leaned out the window and retched onto the rocky, barren ground.

His life, made one of sacrifice for the King’s plans and throne and goals and rule.

His life, that had been about his family and Katherine and  _ Jack,  _ about loving them and living for them, taken over by a cruel old man.

He’d never get a gravestone. He would burn. He would be remembered as a faceless fighter who couldn’t stop a giant, couldn’t save his family, only enabled a man to tighten his grip across the world.

He wiped his mouth and looked back at Katherine. Katherine, shaking under the weight of the earth and sky and underworld.

When he spoke, his voice was raspy and raw. 

“What are we going to do?”

Katherine ran a trembling hand through her hair.

“I do not know.”

 

She didn’t know  _ how  _ she didn’t know that there would be traps. She should have known.

Her father had done everything he could to make sure they wouldn’t come back alive. Of course there would be traps around the lair, he wouldn’t have settled for any threat without a line of defense. There had to be a viper in the corner, waiting to strike.

Still, it took her by surprise.

One moment they were riding past scattered bones, obnoxiously cliché but nonetheless terrifying to see. Then, in quick succession, three things happened.

She heard David inhale sharply next to her, a sharp little thing.

Hildy, a quiet shapeshifter Katherine remembered sitting as a bird on Rafaela’s lap, let out a strangled scream before she fell off of her horse.

And behind them, she heard Buttons shriek as if her throat had been ripped open.

Everything seemed to grind to a slow halt as Katherine watched, frozen. Hildy frantically switched between forms, golden coloring and a dart sticking out of her neck the only similarities between all of them. David practically threw himself out of their carriage to get to Buttons, and only then did she remember how to move.

She saw Crutchie crouched over Hildy, muttering and drawing sparking lines over. There was nothing she could do there, so she ran back with David to where Buttons convulsed on the ground.

At his side, she realized that she felt useless either way.

Medda frantically searched through their bags while David kept Buttons on her side, murmuring quietly to her and brushing stray curls away from her sweaty forehead.

“It is her tree,” someone said to Katherine in a rumbling bass. “I have seen Dryads seize this way, but never quite like this.”

She didn’t bother to identify the voice, just watched with her words stuck in her chest and her pulse racing.

Rafaela and Finch, flying in the opposite direction, her heart in their hands.

Two good women, laying on the ground, out of their reach.

And Katherine had made the call to hammer the nail through the coffin.

 

Without any solid plan, they edged forward, afraid of whatever traps might be set.

(The dart had come out of nowhere. There were no rocks for a shooter to hide behind, nothing that resembled a spring-loaded trap. Hildy had gone still after a few minutes, and they loaded both her and Buttons in Medda’s wagon.)

David sat, shivering despite the rising temperature, in the carriage as they moved forwards. Katherine watched him out of the corner of her eye the whole time.

He spoke slowly. “If we continue, more will die. Until eventually, we are all gone. And then he has what he needs.”

It was painfully to the point. So much of what David said was.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“He will not be remotely satisfied without a martyr. If anyone is to go back, someone needs to die.” He wrung his hands, scraping his fingernails along the freckles on the back of his hands.

She considered it. For him, the ideal would be everyone dying. For them, the ideal would be everyone living. But they could not bear his ideal, and he would not tolerate theirs.

He needed a reason for the leftover lives. He needed to be told that a sacrifice was made.

“We minimize grieving,” she said firmly. “Not Crutchie. We save Buttons if we can. No one who is needed or dearly loved.”

She tried to wrap her mind around the idea of choosing who died and who got to live.

“Katherine, I…” She looked at him closely as he took a few deep, shuddering breaths. “Katherine, it needs to be us. We both know we were not meant to be missed.”

It made perfect sense, really. The only ones that would need to grieve would be the Kingdom, not any of the lands they intended to flatten.

She had tried to die so many times. Why would this time be any different?

(Because finally, finally, she didn’t want to. The cruelest twist of fate, really.)

“Will you approach Medda and Crutchie about it?” she asked, her voice pitifully small. “I… I do not think I could convince them. They trust you more.”

“Of course,” he said, and she believed him.

Late at night, he slipped back in, and Katherine looked up, blinking away sleep. He smiled at her, even though it didn't reach his eyes, and tucked himself in next to her.

“It took some explaining,” he said to the darkness. “Crutchie caught on first about the King wanted us dead, but they do not know why.”

“So they agreed?” Katherine asked, and she heard David’s shifting next to her still. In the same moment, they felt reality confronting them both, with cold hands trailing down their spines and cupping their cheeks.

“They did. In the morning, all will be announced, and they will leave us.”

They fell silent, and she was sure he thought she was asleep when he finally spoke again.

“And then we will be alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY so some shit just went down huh!!!!!!!!!! we have 3 chapters left, and chapter 9 is going to answer a lot of questions that i HOPE you have. feel free to leave any you do have below! (also if you have any warnings you think i should add to the first notes, please tell me)  
> as always, my tumblr is @penzyroamin! PLEASE rb this fic's post if you like it, it helps me a lot.  
> those of you who leave comments make my day!!!!! i owe you a private island  
> have a great morning/day/afternoon/evening/midnight. thank you for reading <3 <3 !!!  
> ps pulitzer is a DICK dick in this wow

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhh yeah. so! i'm expecting to update this slower than losing my mind, partially because i'm busier but also because i'm aiming for 3k-4k words for each of these chapters. so hopefully one of those every two weeks, but don't count on me too hard.  
> if you're liking this so far, maybe give it a comment and/or go rb the post on tumblr!!!! (@penzyroamin)   
> aaaaaand yeah. i think that's about it. i hope you all are having a lovely 2019 so far!!! thank you for reading!


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